LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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^p Mv* Colics* 



LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. Chroti- 
icles of a Stroller in New England from Jan- 
uary to June. i6mo, $1.25. 

AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from 
July to December. i6mo, $1.25. 

FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY, AND 
OTHER PAPERS. i6mo, ;?i.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY 



AND OTHER PAPERS 



BY. 



FRANK BOLLES 




OC] ^ 1894) 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK ^ 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1894 






Copyright, 1894, 
By ELIZABETH QUINCY BOLLES. 

All rights reserved. 



{X-SO%0^ 



The, Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. , U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



NOTE. 

The following papers, with the exception of 
the first four, which are Mr. BoUes's latest work, 
are arranged in the order in which they were 
written and first published in different periodi- 
cals between the years 1890 and 1894. 

They are now reprinted in their original form, 
although this involves a certain amount of repe- 
tition which would doubtless have been avoided 
had Mr. Bolles himself revised them. 

'Barred Owls in Captivity and the two papers 

that follow appeared originally in " The Auk," 

Bird Traits in " The New England Magazine," 

the next two as well as the first four in '' The 

Atlantic Monthly," Ways of the Owl and the 

two closing papers in "The Popular Science 

Monthly." 

E. Q. B. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

From Blomidon to Smoky ...... 1 

Ingonish, by Land and Sea 38 

The Home of Glooscap 56 

August Birds in Cape Breton .... 82 

Barred Owls in Captivity . . , , . 106 

Sapsuckers and their Guests .... 131 

Young Sapsuckers in Captivity .... 156 

Ways of the Owl 176 

Bird Traits 206 

Individuality in Birds 219 

Birds at Yule-Tide 237 

Up the Chimney 247 

The Humming-Birds of Chocorua .... 260 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Against the Bay of Fundy, witli its fogs and 
turbulent waters, Nova Scotia presents a bold 
front of bastion and moat combined. The bas- 
tion is called North Mountain, and is a well- 
wooded ridge running parallel to the southeast 
shore of the Bay of Fundy for nearly its entire 
length. The moat consists of St. Mary's Bay, 
the Annapolis Basin, and the Basin of Minas, 
and their tributary rivers, all lying within the 
line of North Mountain. Parallel with both 
bastion and moat, and presiding over the well- 
tilled fields which border the several basins, is 
South Mountain, from whose height can be ob- 
tained the finest views of the land of Evan- 
geline, and its impressive central figure, the 
spruce-covered, storm-haunted Blomidon. 

When we landed at Yarmouth, far down near 
the southern tip of Nova Scotia, and saw the 
monotonous country which is characteristic of 
that part of the province, something very much 
like gloom settled upon our spirits. We took 
an early morning train, and started eastward 
and northward towards Blomidon. Rain, miles 



2 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

of larch and spruce swamp, burned woodland 
given up to tangles of fireweed and briers, and 
cbeerless, rock - rimmed ponds in low woods 
haunted us until we reached Digby. True, our 
escape from the railway at Meteghan station, 
and our five hours with Mr. Sheehan, the royal 
mail carrier and hospitable hotel keeper, bright- 
ened us somewhat ; but there was nothing at 
the railway to tell us of the quaint French set- 
tlement of Meteghan which lay concealed, be- 
yond ridge and woods, on the pleasant shores of 
St. Mary's Bay. As we left Digby, late in the 
afternoon of this first long day in Nova Scotia, 
the clouds broke, the setting sun struggled for 
the mastery of the sky, and all the heavens were 
filled with shifting masses of storm and charging 
columns of golden light. The bank of vapor 
which had rested upon the Annapolis Basin at 
North Mountain — vapor brewed, no doubt, in 
the Bay of Fundy — suddenly lifted, and we 
saw under it not only the vivid greens of forest 
and field on the mountain, but Digby Gut, a 
narrow, steep-walled cleft in the mountain lead- 
ing straight out to the golden glory of the bay 
of storms. Through that rift in the hill ro- 
mance and the French had sailed in as long ago 
as the first years of the seventeenth century ; and 
though the French sailed out again, romance re- 
mained behind to dwell forever in Port Royal's 
placid basin. 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 3 

As our train neared Port Royal, long ago 
called Annapolis, and rolled along the southern 
shore of the basin, the beauty of the scene in- 
creased, thanks largely to the brilliant effects of 
cloud-masses and an ardent setting sun. The 
mountain seemed high, its top not being clearly 
defined, and the wild scenery near Bear River, 
where the train passes over a high curved 
trestle, became doubly striking in the sunset 
lights. Every few rods a blue heron flew from 
the sands and flapped away from the train. 
Marvelous flocks of peep rose, careened, flashing 
like silver, wheeled, and alighted once more on 
good feeding-ground. Shadows nestled amongst 
the weirs running out at short intervals from 
the shore ; darkness began to gather in the 
valleys and the woods, and soon we reached 
Annapolis with its ancient earthworks, and 
found something akin to comfort in its best but 
unpretentious inn. 

It was on the afternoon of the next day, our 
second on the peninsula, that I saw Blomidon, 
— saw it first from the Kentville slopes, and 
again, after we had followed down the dashing, 
dancing Gaspereaux for several miles, from the 
heights above Wolfville. The Gaspereaux Val- 
ley had been charming by reason of its wooded 
hillsides, in parts holding the river closely be- 
tween dark banks of spruce and fir, but later 



4 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

giving it freer range through well-tilled mead- 
ows and undulating fields. Evening, heralded 
by rolling masses of dark clouds, seemed to be 
upon us, as our horses slowly climbed the steep 
slope of the Gaspereaux back of Wolfville. 
The air grew cold, and when we reached the 
crest of the ridge a strong wind wrestled with 
us, and carried a chill from Fundy to the very 
marrow of our bones. Then it was that, gaining 
the edge of the northern slope, we suddenly saw 
the marvelous panorama of the Cornwallis Val- 
ley, North Mountain, Blomidon, the Basin of 
Minas, the Acadian dike lands including Grand 
Pre, and the mouth of the Gaspereaux, spread 
before us under the sunset lights and the em- 
phatic contrasts of speeding wind clouds. 

The tide was out, and miles of basin bottom 
lay red and shining in the sunlight. The dike 
lands were intensely green, the sands, or mud, 
all shades of terra cotta, the shallows strange 
tones of purple, and the deeper waters varying 
shades of blue. Color ran riot in meadow, mud, 
and bay. Above and beyond all, directly in 
front of us, miles away, at the extremity of a 
grand sweep of shore w^hich curved towards it 
from our left, was a dark red bluff crowned 
with evergreens. Its profile was commanding. 
From the edge of its forest it fell one quarter of 
the way to the sea in a line perfectly perpen- 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 5 

dicular. Then, relenting a little, the line sloped 
to the waves at a gentler angle, but one still too 
steep for human foot to ascend. This was 
Blomidon, simple, majestic, inspiring. 

The distant northern shore of the basin was 
plainly indicated by a line of blue mountains, 
the Cobequid range, and we knew that between 
us and its rugged coast-line the mighty, pent-up 
tides of Fundy raced each day and night into 
the comparative calm of Minas, and spread 
themselves there over the red sands and up to 
the dikes which the Acadian peasants had built 
round about Grand Pre. After receiving the 
image of Blomidon into the deepest corners of 
our memories, we looked next at Grand Pre, 
and, looking, gave up all previous impressions 
of it gained from Longfellow's poem. The 
Grand Pre which he imagined and painted 
without ever visiting the Gaspereaux country is 
not the dike land of reality. Both are charm- 
ing, but around the vast level of green grass 
which lay below us there were no whispering 
pines or hemlocks, no suggestion of the primeval 
forest. To the low undulating or level fields 
which bordered the Gaspereaux, the Pereaux, 
the Grand Habitant, and other rivers of this 
region, the Acadian farmers added by degrees 
marsh lands naturally swept by the tides, but 
from which they carefully and permanently -ex- 



6 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

eluded all salt water. Longfellow's picture is 
of salt meadows flooded annually by the sea, 
and surrounded by a forest country, romantic 
in character. We saw forests far away on 
Blomidon, and back of us in the upper reaches 
of the Gaspereaux; but near the Basin of 
Minas and the dike country of Grand Pre the 
apple-tree and the willow are, in this generation 
at least, kings among trees. To flood Grand 
Pre with salt water would be to carry ruin and 
desolation to its fertile acres, and sorrow to the 
hearts of its thrifty owners. Its best lands are 
worth four hundred dollars an acre, and r.equire 
no enrichment. When the sea floods them, as 
it occasionally does, owing to the breaking of a 
dike, three years are required to bring the land 
back to even fair condition. 

The next afternoon a pair of Kentville horses 
carried us speedily towards Blomidon. We 
crossed the Grand Habitant or Cornwallis River 
at Kentville, and then followed the general 
direction of the shore of the basin until we had 
crossed in order the Canard, Habitant, and 
Pereaux rivers, and gained the North Mountain. 
Striking a ravine in its side, we ascended a well- 
made road to the summit at a point called " the 
Look-off." I know of no other hill or mountain 
which gives the reward that this one does in 
proportion to the effort required to climb it. 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 7 

Many a rough White Mountain scramble up 
three thousand feet yields nothing like the view 
which this hill affords. The Nova Scotian 
glories in the fact that from it he can see into 
seven counties, and count prosperous farms by 
the score and apple-trees by the hundred thou- 
sand. 

From the shores of the basin westward through 
the valley between the North and South Moun- 
tain well-tilled farm lands reach towards An- 
napolis as far as the eye can see. It is a patch- 
work of which the provinces are and may well 
be proud ; that quilted landscape, with grain and 
potatoes, orchard and hayfield, feather-stitched 
in squares by zigzag pole fences. Were this 
the whole or the essence of the view from the 
Look-off, it would not be worth writing about, 
for farm lands by themselves, or with a frame 
of rounded hills, are neither novel nor inspiring. 
That which stirs, in this view, is the mingling 
of Minas Basin, its blue water and dim farther 
shores, with Grand Pre and the other dike lands 
and with the red bluffs of Pereaux. The patch- 
work and hills serve only as contrast, back- 
ground, filling, to the pronounced features of 
sparkling sea, bright green meadows cleft from 
the sea by dikes, terra-cotta sands and bluffs, 
and the forest-covered ridge leading towards half- 
concealed Blomidon, the monarch of this gay 



8 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

and sunlit realm. It was dreamlike to see the 
tide creeping in over the shining red sand and 
ooze, and changing their vivid tints by blending 
with them its own colors to make tones strange 
both to sea and sand. The wide expanses of 
mud left bare by the tide told in their own way 
the story of the Acadian dike builder. No man 
of the soil could see the riches exposed daily to 
view without wishing to keep them for his own 
tillage. Even the man of to-day, who lay be- 
side me on the turf of the Look-off, told of his 
visions of a new dike many times greater than 
any that the simple Acadian farmer had built, 
and which is some day to snatch a million 
dollars' worth of land from Minas Basin, and 
make it ♦into a part of the prosperous Nova 
Scotia of the future. Listening to the dike 
builder, and wondering at the absence in this 
exquisite place of the hotels, pushing railways, 
dainty steamers, and other machinery which at 
home would long ago have been applied to give 
this spot to the madding crowd, it suddenly 
came over me that this was not a part of the 
United States, but a sleepy corner of Greater 
Britain. Even the great dike must be built on 
paper in London before it intrudes on Minas 
Basin. 

The next time that I fully realized Nova 
Scotia's bondage was two days later, in Halifax 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 9 

on Sunday morning. It was a warm day at 
best, but wlien we had fairly pelted up a narrow 
street set on the earth at an angle best adapted 
to tobogganing, and gained the gateway of a 
chapel yard, all nature seemed melting. The 
hot air was moved, not by a vulgar breeze, but 
by the tramp of military men, and by the 
scampering of women and children who gazed 
upon the military men, and grew redder in the 
light reflected from their uniforms. There was 
morning service in the garrison chapel, and the 
redcoats were out in force to attend it. They 
marched lightly, quickly, and with an elastic 
step pleasant to see. They were good-looking 
boys, as a rule, and when seated, hundreds 
strong, in the wooden pews of the chapel, they 
looked tidy and good enough to be mothers' own 
boys safe at home in the wayside chapels of the 
old country. Above them, in the walls, were set 
a score of marble tablets commemorative of 
British officers who had died in or near Halifax. 
The ages of these fallen heroes seemed to range 
from seventeen to about twenty-four. No won- 
der England is a power on the earth, when her 
fighters begin life in childhood, and her states- 
men keep on ruling until near fourscore and 
ten. 

The red-coated youths joined heartily in the 
Church service, singing, responding, and listen- 



10 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

ing attentively to the sermon, whicli was manly 
and direct. A young officer read the lessons, 
and when a cornet added its ringing tones to the 
choir the Church militant seemed complete in its 
equipment. It was when the prayer for the 
Queen and the Prince of Wales was reached that 
I suddenly realized the full meaning of the scene 
which surrounded me. This was a garrison 
church, owned by a foreign power and occupied 
by foreign soldiers. These soldiers were not 
Nova Scotians, but Englishmen, planted here 
as much to watch the Nova Scotians as to serve 
any other purpose. I could not help remember- 
ing the time, long ago, when Massachusetts dis- 
pensed with redcoats, and in the very act of driv- 
ing them away from her coast gained new life 
which has animated her to this day. Nova Scotia 
men are good enough and true enough to defend 
Nova Scotia soil. 

When the redcoats sang " God save the 
Queen," at the close of their service, I joined 
with them ; but the words I knew, and which I 
sang as vigorously as prudence and courtesy per- 
mitted, made no reference to their distant sover- 
eign. Still, the tune was the same, we were 
brothers in music, and there was no shadow of 
unkindness in my feeling towards the manly sol- 
diers as we trooped out of chapel together. 
While they formed in ranks on the green, I met 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 11 

and chatted with their commanding officer. Sud- 
denly the twelve o'clock gun was fired from the 
citadel above us. The general started visibly, 
but almost at the same moment his betrayal of 
nervousness was covered by the band, which 
struck up " Ta-ra-ra, boom de ay," putting spring 
into the soldiers' heels, and broad grins upon the 
spectators' faces. 

The next day, after a little patient pulling of 
red tape, I gained admission to the great citadel 
of Halifax, popularly supposed to be the key to 
its defenses. The works were in poor repair ; 
the guns in sight were old in style, and not of a 
calibre to alarm an enemy's ships in the outer 
harbor ; but the equipment was amply sufficient 
to keep Halifax itself in order, or to deal effect- 
ively with an insurgent army attempting to ap- 
proach the city. Against the attack of a strong 
foreign enemy the citadel would be of use mainly 
as a refuge for the women and children of Hali- 
fax. The real defenses of the city are earth- 
works in or near the harbor, and an elaborate 
system of mines and torpedoes underlying the 
channel. 

The citadel has one unquestioned merit which 
all the world, red or blue, can enjoy : it gives 
from its ramparts, or from the open grassy slopes 
just outside the bastions, an excellent view of 
Halifax and all its picturesque surroundings. 



12 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

This view aud the winning hospitality of the 
Halifax people were fresh and bright in our 
memories as we took the Intercolonial train 
northward on Tuesday morning. Outside the 
train, scanty forests, growing over a country 
which appeared to have been bombarded with 
rocks, offered no encouragement to an inquisitive 
gaze. Inside, motley humanity invented many 
ways of distracting us in more senses than one. 
Salvationists sat three in a seat and played con- 
certinas ; a company of maroons, the big negroes 
of the country, disported in their best clothes ; 
dozens of young Christian Endeavor delegates 
hobnobbed together ; while some Nova Scotia 
militia-men, by their calf-like antics, made us 
think more kindly of the British garrison left 
behind. If the scenery failed to charm, the 
names of places did not fail to astonish us. 
Acadie, Tracadie, Shubenacadie, rang in my ears 
for days, and so did the less harmonious refrain 
of Tignish, Antigonish and Merigomish. When 
I heard of Pugwash the climax seemed attained. 
It did not seem possible that any swain could 
go a-courting a girl from Pugwash. 

The day wore on. Names became places and 
faded back to names again, and then it began to 
rain. It was in the rain that we first saw the 
hills of Cape Breton looming up on the further 
side of the Gut of Canso. We had expected to 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 13 

be impressed by this strait and its bold shores, 
but its proportions as seen through slowly falling 
mist were disappointing. Had we not known 
what it was, it would have seemed undeniably 
commonplace. 

It was about three o'clock on the afternoon of 
Auo'ust 1 that we crossed the Strait of Canso 
and first touched Cape Breton soil. A boy with 
baskets of freshly picked cultivated strawberries 
welcomed us to the island. Our mental calendar 
rolled back from August to June, and we enjoyed 
those berries as though they were the first of the 
season. Each berry marked a mile of wet forest 
scenery, and by the time they were gone we were 
well on our way to the Bras d'Or lakes. From 
6.45 A. M. to 5.15 p. M. is a long day's ride in a 
Nova Scotia car, and we sighed with relief when 
the train rolled slowly over the seven-span iron 
bridge at Grand Narrows, and then slid away 
up the shore of the Bras d'Or towards Sydney, 
leaving us to take a funny little steamer for 
Baddeck. 

Cape Breton is shaped a good deal like a lob- 
ster's claw open towards the north, and this claw 
holds in its grasp the grotesquely irregular arm 
of the sea known as the Bras d'Or lakes. Com- 
ing by rail from the Strait of Canso to Grand 
Narrows, we had given up, or rather avoided, a 
trip by steamer up the whole length of the Big 



14 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Bras d'Or. Had the afternoon been pleasant 
the voyage would have been charming, for the 
placid inland sea, with its picturesque shores 
now close in view, and again below the horizon, 
is one of the chief beauties of Cape Breton. As 
the afternoon was shrouded in fine rain, the Big 
Bras d'Or would have been no more attractive 
than any other chilly fog-bank, and the voyage 
through it would have consumed all the remain- 
ing hours of the day. As matters stood, we had 
two hours of daylight before us ; the rain had al- 
most ceased ; an occasional gleam of golden light 
wandered over the shores of the Little Bras d'Or ; 
and we were about to embark on a steamer which 
would take us through a portion of the lakes 
where both of the hilly and picturesque shores 
would be uninterruptedly in sight. 

Had we seen this charming landscape immedi- 
ately after bidding farewell to Chocorua, it would 
have failed to make the strong impression upon us 
which as a matter of fact it did produce. So much 
of Nova Scotia between Yarmouth and Halifax, 
and so nearly the whole of the country between 
Halifax and Grand Narrows, had been of a kind 
which every one sleeps through or scowls at in 
the States that the Bras d'Or was a paradise in 
comparison : a lake, yet the sea with its restless 
jellyfish; the sea, yet a land-locked basin sur- 
rounded by graceful hills, trim farm lands, and 



FKOM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 15 

dark forests of spruce and balsam. Many of the 
hills, rising from the water with resolute lines, 
wore the dignity of mountains ; and so perfect 
were their proportions that bays only half a mile 
in length often seemed like far-reaching thorough- 
fares worthy of a voyager's exploration. Grad- 
ually the Grand Narrows bridge faded away, 
until it looked like a line of tatting work against 
the gray sky. Then the most distant hills north- 
ward rose into well-rounded summits, and at last 
two noble headlands invited us to turn westward 
between them, and to approach Baddeck, masked 
by an island, spruce-grown, heron-haunted, and 
capped by a tiny lighthouse whose gleaming eye 
now emphasized the gathering gloom. 

The traveler who expects anything picturesque 
in an American village, town, or city, whether it 
be seen from the sea, a lake, a plain, or a hilltop, 
will in nine cases out of ten be wholly disap- 
pointed. Box-shaped wooden warehouses, shops, 
dwellings, and churches, whether arranged in 
parallelograms or hurled together in true Marble- 
head fashion, whether painted white, pink, green, 
yellow, or red, or not painted at all, generally 
lack the power of pleasing the eye. They are 
cheap, comfortless in appearance, , temporary in 
nature, and essentially vulgar in design. Bad- 
deck, as we anticipated, consisted of the usual 
conglomeration of wooden buildings, rickety 



16 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

wharves, and country roads ; and when we crept 
round the island, and saw it lank and gawky be- 
fore us, we felt as though we had seen it many 
times before. It made for us a good point of de- 
parture, and as such we used it, for a few walks 
into its thickets after birds and plants, and for 
long trips to the Margaree rivers, and northward 
to Cape Smoky. 

We took our first walk that evening, soon 
after landing and getting settled at the Dunlops'. 
During that walk we learned several distinguish- 
ing characteristics of Baddeck. In the first 
place, Baddeck's streets are not lighted. In the 
second place, what in the darkness appear to be 
sidewalks are only plank coverings above deep 
gutters or brook beds which border the way ; 
and as the continuity of this platform depends 
upon the personal whim of the abutter, it is not 
surprising that when Rory's sidewalk ceased we 
fell into Torquil's part of the ditch. The soil 
of Baddeck is so composed of clay and other sub- 
stances that rain either runs to the Bras d'Or, 
or stands till heaven takes pity on it and draws 
it skyward again. The third fact we learned that 
night was that cows in Baddeck all wear bells, 
sleep in the highways, and are never allowed in- 
side a fence. Whenever and wherever we turned, 
a sudden " tinkle-tankle " would show that we had 
nearly fallen over a prostrate cow : therefore, 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 17 

after half an hour of darkness, ditches, and 
cows, we returned to the hotel and its comforts ; 
but all night long the cowbells tinkled through 
our dreams. 

For the Margaree drive we took three days, 
starting from Baddeck early on Thursday, Au- 
gust 3, in a top buggy behind a six-year-old horse 
named Jim. The first day we drove twenty-six 
miles, the second twenty-two, and the third ten, 
fortunately catching a steamer at Whycocomagh, 
and so coming back to Baddeck alive, and with 
Jim still able to feel the whip. We had been 
told that the Margaree country was entrancing ; 
but when the trip was over we had reached the 
conclusion, afterward confirmed by a Cape Breton 
veteran, that salmon had first drawn the husbands 
to the Margaree and made them enthusiastic 
about it, and that later, when the wives invaded 
the region, they had been taught to find consola- 
tion in the pretty scenery. In our three days' 
trip we found but two spots which in the White 
Mountains would be deemed worthy of special 
notice. One of these was Loch o' Law, and the 
other Loch Ainslie. We came to the former 
near the close of our first day's drive. Worn 
and weary with flogging Jim, and insisting twice 
each minute on his return to the middle of the 
deeply rutted and often dangerously washed road, 
I had lost all interest in everything save the dim 



18 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

prospect of food and bed, wlien suddenly I saw 
tlie gleam of water directly before us, and the 
next moment we came out of tlie woods upon 
the shore of a long, narrow lake held close to 
the heart of lofty hills. Our road followed the 
western margin of the tarn, and the dark forest 
which overhung us made premature twilight for 
us to jog through. Beyond the lake, on its east- 
ern side, three impressive hills stood shoulder to 
shoulder, one of rock, one of turf, one of forest. 
They were so steep, it seemed as though only 
goats could find a foothold upon their flanks. 
Between the hill of rock and the hill of turf lay 
a great gorge, overhung by cliffs and full of 
shadows. The hills themselves were bathed in 
warm sunlight, and the water was partly in 
shadow and partly in light. A mother loon and 
her smart little chick were swimming down the 
lake, and seven or eight great blue kingfishers 
flew up and down its borders, sounding over and 
over again their watchman's rattles. This was 
Loch o' Law, a gem worthy of its rare setting 
and of its place near the heart of Cape Breton. 
From it the escaping waters rush downward to 
help form the Northeast Margaree River, and 
the road we were following led us down with the 
stream to the pleasant intervale where geese 
wander in flocks up and down the roads, and 
salmon swim proudly in the bright waters of 
their favorite river. 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 19 

From Northeast Margaree to Margaree Forks, 
and from the Forks up the Southwest Margaree 
to Loch Ainslie, the scenery was not equal to the 
task of dispossessing Jim of the foremost place 
in our minds. Jim shied, stumbled, sweated, 
until we thought disintegration was near at hand, 
and, worse than all, required unremitting guid- 
ance to keep him in the road. Had the natural 
beauties of the country been as great as we ex- 
pected, I doubt not that Jim would have tipped 
us into the swift-flowing waters of the Southwest 
Margaree long before Loch Ainslie was reached. 
Had Jim been the horse he might have been, 
we should have enjoyed much more the pretty 
glimpses of moving water, the deep pools tempt- 
ing a passing cast, the meadows thick with spikes 
of splendid orchids, and the rounded hillsides 
thickly clad with woods. 

Loch Ainslie is a beautiful sheet of water, 
covering in all about twenty-five square miles, 
and surrounded by good farm land running back 
upon high hills. Highlanders settled the country, 
and their descendants, who still own the farms, 
are eager, like so many of our New England 
farmers, to sell their places, and try life under 
less picturesque but more profitable conditions. 
We were welcomed to a Highlander's home, and 
told where we could fish to advantage from three 
o'clock till dark. Long before tea time we had 



20 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

caught more trout than we could eat for supper 
and breakfast, and by nightfall Loch Ainslie had 
impressed itself upon us as the most beautiful 
part of the Margaree country. This it did mainly 
at sunset, when, from near a grove of lofty pines, 
we watched the most delicate tints come and go 
in the sky, on the distant western hills, and in 
the fair lake itself, with its miles of rippling 
water blushing and paling in sympathy with the 
heavens. While the sunset lasted we thought 
more of color than of form in our beautiful sur- 
roundings ; but after the passing away of orange, 
yellow, pale green, violet, and finally blue itself, 
we were soothed by the lovely contour of the 
beach, the silhouettes of the pines, the sweep of 
hill crest, the pallid lake, and the mystery of the 
unfathomable sky. 

Next day, August 5, we drove from Loch Ains- 
lie to Whycocomagh, called by the natives 
" Hogomah," and there, with a sigh of relief, put 
Jim, the buggy, and ourselves upon a steamer, 
and returned to Baddeck without further wea- 
riness of spirit. This part of the Bras d'Or is 
like the rest of the great labyrinth of inland sea, 
charming at every point. At times so narrow 
as to be more river than lake, it winds around 
high wooded hills, curves into countless bays, 
and then expands proudly to meet the Little 
Bras d'Or at Baddeck. 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 21 

Early on the following Monday morning, 
having in the mean time eaten wild strawberries 
picked in the larch swamps and spruce thickets 
back of Baddeck, we set out for Cape Smoky. 
Theoretically we were going on foot, but it so 
chanced that the kindest and most entertain- 
ing of friends found it convenient to carry us 
eighteen miles northward to Englishtown, on 
St. Anne's Bay. Sullen clouds hung over Bras 
d'Or, as we drove for a mile or two along its 
shore before entering the woods and beginning 
the long and easy ascent to the watershed be- 
tween lake and bay. Gradually the sky as- 
sumed a more threatening aspect, and when at 
last the height of land was reached, and we saw 
before us St. Anne's Bay, narrow at first among 
the trees, and growing broad as it met the sea 
and faced boldly northward towards Newfound- 
land, huge black clouds rolled eastward, pouring 
cold rain upon mountain, bay, and road. 

We drove faster as the tingling drops splashed 
upon us. Dashing through dark spruces, spin- 
ning down steep grades, round sudden curves, 
over frail bridges which spanned foaming 
brooks, and then out into the open, we found 
the bay on our left, and beyond it, showing 
dimly through the storm, a large mountain. It 
was Barasois (or Smith's) Mountain, and from its 
left North River emerged to empty into a broad 



22 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

arm of the bay, while behind it, further north, 
the Barasois Kiver, winding through primeval 
forests, flowed eastward to reach the sea ahead 
of us outside of the mouth of St. Anne's Bay. 
Soon we saw Englishtown a mile or two in front 
of us, on the eastern side of the bay, and then 
we noticed, apparently running from shore to 
shore, a narrow white bar which separated bay 
from sea. Now the clouds began to break and 
roll away, and far, far beyond the bar we could 
see headlands of various degrees of dignity and 
grandeur looking seaward. The last of them, 
very distant, very high, cloud-capped, with a 
front like Blomidon's steepest face, filled us 
with a yearning to reach it and worship at its 
mighty shrine. It was Smoky, the monarch of 
the northern sea. 

Glorious yellow sunshine poured down upon 
Barasois Mountain and the heaving waters of 
St. Anne's Bay as we entered the little fishing 
village of Englishtown. The worst of the storm 
was passing beyond us, and myriad perpendicu- 
lar lines of falling rain were ruled from sea to 
sky across the north. With latent impatience 
we rested, ate, and said good-by to our friends. 
Then our feet tramped the muddy road, our 
noses sniffed the atmosphere of drying cod on 
the flakes, our ears listened to the song of the 
juncoSj and our eyes gazed forward, northward, 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 23 

toward Smoky. The head of the great cape was 
cloud-capped, but this made it seem all the 
more heaven-reaching. 

Turning to the left from the road, we de- 
scended to the shore of the bay, and found our- 
selves just opposite the long white cobblestone 
bar which we had seen afar off. Between us 
and its tip lay a deep channel which connected 
St. Anne's Bay with the ocean. On the shore 
was a boat, and an impatient ferryman stood by 
it watching us descend. " Where are you go- 
ing?" he asked, his keen eyes searching us. 
" Northward," I answered. " Like the wild 
geese," he said, with a mocking laugh, and 
pushed off into the current. He was Torquil 
McLean, well known to all who travel on the 
North Shore, and holding in his face many a 
suggestion of the Highland stock from which 
he is descended, and the wild north country 
in which he lives, and its counterpart in which 
his race was moulded. His strong arms soon 
brought us to the bar, upon which two wagons, 
several people, and a sheep were awaiting his 
arrival. 

A road, scarcely perceptible at first glance, 
lay along the bar towards the beginning of the 
North Shore country into which we were ventur- 
ing. Between us and the north pole there was 
notliing legally definable as a hotel. This vague 



24 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

track over the cobblestone beacb led to the 
mainland, and then, past farm and fisherman's 
hut, thirty -four miles to Ingonish Bay, and 
thirty-six miles more to Cape North. Our lodg- 
ing-places must be the simple homes of Gaelic- 
speaking Presbyterians, in whose eyes we should 
be foreigners, not to say heathen. Letters from 
James Dunlop, of Baddeck, addressed to various 
members of Clan McDonald, were our principal 
hope of hospitality. The dimly marked road 
and the cobblestone reef, wheeling, shrieking 
terns, pounding waves from the northern ocean, 
and a sight of new and strange plants combined 
to thrill us with a sense of charming novelty 
and wildness. It was still early in the after- 
noon, and as we did not care how far we ad- 
vanced, having already been carried as far as 
we originally planned to walk that day, we 
strolled slowly along the bar, enjoying the mere 
fact of living. 

Among the plants growing upon the loosely 
packed, egg-shaped stones was one quite unfa- 
miliar and of most uncommon appearance. Its 
succulent and glaucous leaves were bluish-gray 
in color, and set thickly upon prostrate stems 
which radiated like devilfish tentacles from a 
common centre. The leaves diminished rapidly 
in size as they left the root, and at the extremity 
of each stem there were uncoiling clusters of 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 25 

exquisite flowers somewhat resembling tliose of 
the forget-me-not. Flowers fully developed 
were delicate blue, while buds and half-opened 
blossoms were pink. It seemed to me that I 
never saw a plant more perfectly in harmony 
with its surroundings. Lifting no surface for 
the storm winds to seize upon, it nevertheless 
covered much ground. Its delicate leaf tints 
sympathized with those of the polished stones 
and sea-bleached driftwood upon which it grew, 
yet its flowers drew from sky and sea a more 
pronounced beauty of color suflicient to allure 
the butterfly and attract the bee. The botanical 
name of this charming plant is Mertensia mari- 
tima^ though why Gray's manual calls its flowers 
white is more than the Cape Breton plant can 
answer. 

As we neared the mainland, stunted spruces 
and firs grew more abundant and bolder, flowers 
more numerous, and the road plainer and less 
rocky. Birds other than the weird terns flew 
before us, or sang to us from their cover. 
When we reached the higher ground, the sense 
of novelty and isolation faded, and the world 
seemed more like its old southern self. The 
road ran along the shore as closely as it could 
without much winding, and as we progressed 
northward we left St. Anne's Bay behind us, 
and gained a view southeastward along the coast 



26 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

towards Sydney and the entrance to the Bras 
d'Or. Still the beauty of St. Anne's followed 
us, for the glimpses which we had now and then 
of its slowly diminishing shores were of sturdy 
mountains with forests reaching to the waves, 
valleys in which the shades of evening were 
gathering, and farm lands upon which the short 
thick grass lay like velvet in the slanting rays 
of the sun. The view eastward was more rugged. 
Strong faces of rock turned towards the sea and 
fought the waves which had crumbled them, and 
torn away all but the hardest cliffs and ledges. 
One long finger of rock reached into the ocean, 
and pointed to a group of islands which may 
once have been a part of it. They were not 
green isles with sandy margins, but huge angu- 
lar masses of rock with high cliffs, under which 
storms might rage for centuries without drag- 
ging down the grim ramparts. 

We passed a few farms, with houses and 
barns standing far back from the road, as is the 
fashion of these Highlanders, but most of our 
way lay between pastures, mowing-fields with 
short grass partly cropped by the scythes, and 
woodland where black and white spruces and 
balsam firs grew densely together. Upon a 
meadow bordering a salt creek a flock of yellow- 
legs were whistling noisily, and back and forth 
over them kingfishers were flying with their 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 27 

usual cry. As the sun drew near the hills, we 
stopped at a house and blacksmith shoj) and 
presented the first of our letters. William 
McDonald lived here, and our request was 
that he should drive us on our way to Indian 
Brook, where, at Angus McDonald's, we hoped 
to spend the night. William had only a two- 
wheeled sulky, which could scarcely carry three ; 
so it was a relief to all of us when we saw, 
coming from the bar, a youth in a wagon, driv- 
ing a sprightly nag at a rattling pace. After a 
brief conversation in Gaelic, William announced 
that the youth would take us twelve or fourteen 
miles up the coast to French River, where we 
were sure of a good bed at Sandy McDonald's. 
A moment later we were packed in, three on a 
seat, and dashing northward as fast as the pony 
could tear. The youth would have done credit 
to a Spartan mother. I never met any one of 
his age and intelligence who knew so well how 
not to talk. He answered my questions with 
the fewest possible words, but asked nothing in 
return. He knew the names of capes, islands, 
birds, animals, trees, and many flowers, but it 
took a separate question to drag each item from 
him. Meanwhile he kept the horse spinning. 
We had no time to shiver over holes in bridges ; 
the horse knew his business, and jumped the 
holes, at least, if he could not jump the whole 



28 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

bridge. Ruts and gullies were ignored, and we 
learned that, if taken quickly, two ruts and a 
gully are almost as good as a level. 

Twilight was growing upon the earth, and far 
away over the pale sea the light off Cape Dau- 
phin, on the Ciboux Islands, was flashing its mes- 
sage of mingled hope and warning, when suddenly 
we plunged into gloom, wheeled around a dizzy 
curve, and crossed a long iron bridge. Below us 
a river's dark waters reflected the waning glory 
of the sky. This was the Barasois, one of the 
salmon rivers of which we had heard fisherman's 
tales at Baddeck. Two miles more brought us 
to Indian Brook, and again a great curve and a 
dash through the woods prepared us for another 
angle and a sharp descent to a long bridge so full 
of holes that we felt as though only angels could 
have kept our pony's flying feet out of them. A 
vision of cliffs, deep black pools, and distant 
mountains with serrated spruce forests against 
the sunset sky made us determine that Indian 
Brook should not be passed on the gallop when 
we returned from Ingonish, if indeed that happy 
day ever came. 

Darkness having taken full possession of the 
earth, our charioteer urged his horse to even 
wilder efforts, and we shot through dim dangers 
with teeth set and eyes vainly scanning the gloom 
to see what next impended. It was in this fash- 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 29 

ion that we tore across a field towards the cliffs, 
apparently with certain death before us, whirled 
under a steep bank, and found ourselves on the 
ocean's edge, in front of a long, unpainted build- 
ing, before which, standing or sitting upon the 
loaded fish flakes, were a dozen or more men. 
Half an hour later, the telegraph operator at 
the goverment office, a mile up the road, ticked 
to Baddeck the following message given by our 
Jehu : " Them Yanks, the man and woman, are 
at Sandy McDonald's this night." 

" Them Yanks," stiff, stunned, sore, hungry, 
cold, and petrified with astonishment, stood on 
Sandy McDonald's doorstep and silently gazed 
up and down upon land and sea. Truly they 
had been cast upon as unique a shelter as this 
world had ever yet offered them. The long, 
low house clung upon the edge of the bluff, with 
only the width of the fish flakes between it and 
a sharp descent to the ocean. Behind it rolling 
grass land cut off the west. Southward a line 
of bold rocky cliffs overhung a narrow beach, 
upon which the waves broke and cast foam from 
many fragments of ledge which dotted the shore. 
Through a similar line of bluffs on the north 
French River had cut its way, but instead of 
reaching the ocean directly it was turned aside 
by a huge cobblestone barrier raised by storms, 
and so was compelled to flow nearly parallel to 



so FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

the shore for many rods, finally reachmg the sea 
just at the foot of the fish flakes and in front 
of the house. Eastward and northward, as far 
as the eye could see, lay the open ocean. The 
only distance not sky or sea was the broken shore 
near Cape Dauphin and Point Aconi, which 
limited the view towards the southeast and south. 
Just below the fish flakes were several fisher- 
men's huts, crowded together upon uncertain 
foundations above high-tide mark. Boats, great 
tubs for oil, more flakes thickly strewn with split 
fish, masses of seaweed and fish heads, big frag- 
ments of rock worn round by the waves, oars, 
sails, ropes, nets, lobster pots, and nameless rel- 
ics of storm and shore lay in wild confusion 
at the foot of the bank. All the odors of Bil- 
lingsgate rose to salute our trembling nostrils, 
and stronger than all sights and smells came in 
ceaseless iteration the singing and sobbing of 
the great waves. 

Sandy McDonald gave us a hearty welcome, 
and ushered us into a cosy parlor, from which 
opened a tiny bedroom. Simple food, reading by 
McDonald from a Gaelic Bible, a long breath of 
ocean air, and the benediction of the stars fitted us 
for early and profound sleep. It was not until 
gray dawn that I awakened, and^ throwing a 
blanket over my shoulders, stole to the door and 
looked out over the sea. The fishermen were 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY, 31 

already afloat ; several boats were a mile from 
shore, and others, with sails flapping and oars 
thumping, were working their way towards the 
east. Across the far horizon lay a long, low 
bank of white fog. The sun came slowly from 
it and looked at the drowsy world with its one 
red eye. Its light touched each wave as it 
broke, and through the thin green-combing of 
the breaker the sun's glow was rose-colored and 
exquisitely beautiful. So, too, the rosy light lay 
in the thin water which ran back across the shin- 
ing sand, as each wave subsided after breaking 
on the beach. Cape Dauphin and its islands 
floated as rosy castles in a distant haze, and the 
bluffs close to me put on soft and alluring tints, 
soon to be lost, however, as the sun grew clear, 
and by whiter light robbed the scene of most 
of its peculiar charm. 

It was not until after another period of sweet 
sleep that we began our walk of fourteen miles 
from French River over Cape Smoky to Ingonish, 
The day was warm and clear. Smoky stood up 
boldly against the north, facing eastward towards 
the open sea with a front as steep as Blomidon's, 
and nearly three times as high. For about two 
hundred feet above the ocean the mountain's face 
was reddish rock ; thence for a thousand feet 
low trees clothed the rampart with soft green. 
The top, running inland a long distance, appeared 



32 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

to be level, and either wooded or covered with 
bushes. Between us and Smoky two minor 
bluffs pointed into the sea ; but they were 
dwarfed by the loftier cape, and served only as 
milestones to cheer us on our way. 

After walking a mile or more we met two 
men, who addressed us pleasantly, and turned 
to walk with us on our way. The older of the 
two was over eighty, and told of his far-away 
birthplace in the Isle of Lewis. The younger, 
a man of sixty, was very tall, and saw this 
world through but one eye. We soon found 
that it was his son who had been our laconic 
charioteer the evening before, and as the talk 
progressed it became evident that Big Rory, as 
this canny man is called from Baddeck to Cape 
North, was not in. favor of our walking over 
Smoky, when his horse and wagon could be 
earning more American dollars by carrying us. 
We withstood his arguments, however, and en- 
joyed his flow of genial and intelligent conver- 
sation. I felt sure that had Cape Breton been 
called upon to take an active or courageous part 
in this world's doings while Big Rory was 
young, he would have been a power in her life. 
True, he is that in a way now, politically ; but 
provincial politics are so lacking in all that is 
pure, patriotic, or intelligent that neither Big 
Kory nor any other strong man has much 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 33 

chance to make head against the undertow of 
corruption and prejudice. 

By noon we had reached one of the last houses 
" on the southern side of Smoky. Here we sought 
dinner, but found, alas, what too many of the 
North Shore people live upon, — sour bread, 
boiled tea, sour milk sweetened and watered, 
and berries. Our hosts could probably have 
added salt fish, eggs, and oatmeal porridge, had 
they felt like it. But we made the best meal we 
could off the food offered, and asked for no ad- 
ditions, feeling that what we ate might be seri- 
ously diminishing their own dinners. 

Upon rather insufficient rations, therefore, we 
advanced against Smoky, and began the ascent 
by following inland a noisy stream which flowed 
seaward along the mountain's southern border. 
After carrying us deep into the forest, which 
was by far the most lofty and vigorous growth 
of trees we had thus far seen on the island, the 
road crossed the torrent and turned seaward 
again, ascending by easy grades through a dense 
birch growth. On the whole, the road was well 
made, and showed skill on the part of those who 
planned it. When we reached its highest point, 
we found the top still unconquered; so, strik- 
ing through bushes and over steep ledges, we 
clambered to the undisputed summit, and there 
paused to survey the panorama below us. 



34 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

It was assuredly a magnificent view, and one 
which will in time lead many feet to the ledges 
now mainly enjoyed by berry-pickers, bears in- 
cluded. To the west lay barrens similar to those 
which are said to cover the interior of this part 
of Cape Breton. Rocks, bushes, bare ledges, 
and hollows filled with sphagnum or pools of 
amber water were the prevailing elements in a 
country which now and then sustained a patch 
of low spruces or a larger body of mixed woods. 
The east was ocean, limitless and blue. But at 
our feet were the wild details of the great preci- 
pice which fell away from us twelve hundred 
feet to the waves. Over it several large black 
birds were sailing, and the first croak which came 
echoing up the cliffs from them disclosed their 
identity: they were not crows, but ravens. I 
had been told that when I reached Smoky I must 
keep an eye open for ravens ; and true enough, 
here they were. 

Our view northward was limited by the fact 
that the foreground was filled by the great mass 
of mountain which we were next to cross in order 
to look down upon Ingonish. Nevertheless, a 
wide expanse of ocean showed in the northeast, 
and the heads of distant mountains crowded to- 
gether in the northwest. Between sea and moun- 
tains we could catch one glimpse of a nearer head- 
land, with a church steeple rising from a village at 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 35 

its heel. It was the southern view which held us 
enchanted even when we felt that we must pause 
no longer. From the foot of Smoky back to the 
far seclusion of St. Anne's Bay the cliff-lined 
coast we had traversed lay in profile before us. 
Headland after headland pointed eastward, and 
valley after valley wound back among the hills 
and forests. From St. Anne's Bay the coast 
turned eastward and ran away into distance, 
coming out boldly at Cape Dauphin and Point 
Aconi, and retreating again at the mouth of the 
Bras d'Or and the entrance to Sydney Harbor. 
Later in the afternoon Smoky gave us one 
more view, which, by reason of marvelous lights 
and shadows in the sky, was even more beautiful 
than any other picture which Cape Breton or 
Minas Basin revealed to us. We had descended 
many a steep slope, and passed through a fine 
primeval forest where lofty beeches, yellow 
birches, hemlocks, and spruces presented much 
the same aspects which I love so well to see on 
the Lost Trail. We had rounded one shoulder 
of the mountain where the edge of the road had 
slipped down four or five hundred feet into a 
brook bed, leaving only room for a wagon to 
pass between the unguarded edge of the ravine 
and the gravel bank which rose from the road 
on its other side. A horse having already 
plunged down there, I, even on my own feet, 



S6 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

did not like the sensation of passing this spot. 
When I heard that the mail carrier went by it 
in his sulky or sleigh night after night, summer 
and winter, I wished that the highway commis- 
sioners for this district could be compelled to 
travel with him on his dangerous way. Soon 
after leaving this place, the road came out on an 
open hillside commanding an uninterrupted view 
of all that part of Cape Breton lying north of 
Cape Smoky. The coast in profile extended 
northward until its details were lost in dis- 
tance. Bays, headlands, islands, sandy beaches, 
lighthouses, cosy villages, passing ships, sailing 
ravens, and sparkling waves shone on the right, 
while on the left mountain after mountain, all 
heavily wooded, though showing many a bare 
cliff or sculptured summit, filed away from fore- 
ground to distance in mighty ranks. A huge 
mass of storm cloud, sent down from the Bay 
of St. Lawrence, was sweeping proudly across 
the sky from west to east. At some points it 
was inky black and quivering with lightning, at 
others it was white or gray, while on the edges 
of the thunderheads golden reflections from the 
hidden sun gleamed as the banners of the cloud 
army which slowly spread across the plains of 
blue. In the north there arose the dim out- 
line of a high mountain. We knew that it must 
be very near to Cape North, and we fancied that 



FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 37 

from its summit Newfoundland's gloomy crags 
might be seen across the sea. 

One of the nearer mountains attracted our 
notice by its strange outline. As it lay against 
a background of black cloud, its profile of naked 
rock was sharply cut, and high up on its precip- 
itous face a slender column of stone projected 
from the mass, as a ship's figurehead leans for- 
ward from the bows. It was like a human form 
poised over a black abyss, yet lifting its weak 
arms towards heaven. From among the nearer 
mountains a river could be seen winding towards 
the sea. It came along the foot of Smoky, spread 
into a landlocked basin, yet found a narrow chan- 
nel for itself between a lighthouse and a bar, 
and so gained the outer bay. This outer bay 
was cut in twain by a slender rocky promon- 
tory, with picturesque outlines, high cliffs, and 
deep clefts in its side. On the northern margin 
of the farther bay was Ingonish village, and 
along the western border of the nearer bay — on 
the bar, in fact, or close to it and the lighthouse 
— was another hamlet, called Ingonish South 
Bay. It was to this nearer village at our feet 
that we looked with most interest, for it was our 
ultima Thule, 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 

Under the northern shadow of Cape Smoky 
there is a double bay, cut in two by a rocky pe- 
ninsula called Middle Head. Into the half of the 
bay next to Smoky, and chafing restlessly against 
the foundations of its richly colored cliffs, runs 
the Ingonish Kiver, which comes from the al- 
most imj)enetrable forests and morasses of the in- 
terior of northern Cape Breton to pour its clear 
waters into the ocean. No bridge crosses the 
stream, and the traveler who descends from the 
heights of Smoky towards the fishermen's ham- 
let of Ingonish South Bay, which he sees scat- 
tered upon a sandy spit at his feet, finds himself 
halting upon the edge of deep, swift water, with 
cove on his left and bay on his right, and never a 
sign of a way across. If his voice is strong and 
clear, he may waken the fishermen's dogs on the 
other shore, and, what is more to the purpose, 
bring a red-haired, blue-eyed lad to the flatboat 
on the sand, and to the big sweep which will 
presently urge it across to the foot of the red cliffs. 
The people of Ingonish are in part of Irish 
parentage and in part of Scotch, but they are 



INGONISn, BY LAND AND SEA. 39 

almost all members of tlie Roman communion, 
and made of different stuff from the blue Pres- 
byterian Highlanders who dwell along the coast 
between Cape Smoky and the head of St. Anne's 
Bay. In the best of the houses, which stand one 
beyond another on the South Bay beach, lives 
Mr. Baker, whose hospitality makes a journey 
beyond Smoky a possibility, and more than that, 
a pleasure. Here may be laid aside the stoicism 
needed to sustain life during the journey up the 
north shore ; and here, in the midst of restless 
ocean, tawny sands, red cliffs, undulating forests, 
and brooks alive with trout, can be found all 
that nature can give to stimulate happiness or to 
lull the troubled mind, and all that the reason- 
able wanderer can expect to find to make his 
weary flesh comfortable. In the days which we 
spent at Mr. Baker's we learned to love Ingonish 
more and more, as we explored it by land and by 
sea. 

I. 

BY LAND. 

The breath of fire floated in the air, making it 
hazy, softening the mountain contours, giving a 
wicked look to the sea, and filling me, through 
its perfume, with the same feeling of unrest that 
the moose and caribou have as they feel the smoke 
of burning forests tingling in their nostrils. 



40 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Looking inland, I saw the hills marshaled along 
the river, rank behind rank, with their relative 
distances clearly defined by the smoke. The 
mercury was above 90° Fahrenheit, and moun- 
tain climbing was not to be thought of. Middle 
Head, seen across the waves, suggested cool 
breezes, and towards its lean, half -grassy, half- 
rocky finger, pointing ever eastward, we took 
our way. From Mr. Baker's, half a mile of 
sandy road runs northward parallel with an 
ideally beautiful beach. Then the road bends 
to the left, inland, while the beach curves to the 
right, seaward, rising soon into sandy banks, 
which in turn change to sculptured cliffs at 
whose foot the sea murmurs. 

Terns with black-tipped wings skimmed close 
to the restless waves, and over the fretted sand 
where the ripples had left the marks of their 
lips. No one walked upon the road where man 
had scratched together badly the same sand 
which nature had made perfect by the tides. 

When I looked at Ingonish beach as it was, 
silent, lonely, serene, and pure, I thought what 
it might some day be made if fashionable men 
and women, on pleasure bent, chanced to dis- 
cover it and to feel the thrill of its sun-tempered 
tide, which is as mild as that of their favorite 
but more southern shores. Now, at least, the 
absence of hotels where such men and women 



INGONISff, BY LAND AND SEA. 41 

might be fed and put to bed, if by chance the 
sea or their own feet cast them upon these dis- 
tant sands, makes it certain that they will not 
come to banish Eden by their presence. 

Between the sand beach and the road there 
rises a massive wall of rounded stones, varying 
in size from a goose egg to a human skull. Can 
waves alone have raised such a dike ? The same 
question came to me as I studied a similar wall 
running along the seaward side of the bar which 
well nigh makes St. Anne's Bay a lake, and 
Torquil McLean's ferry a superfluity instead of 
a somewhat malodorous joy. Perhaps the fact 
that often, in winter, the ice comes stealing 
across from Newfoundland and the seas that lie 
beyond it, and packs itself against St. Anne's 
bar and all the north coast of Cape Breton, may 
explain these walls. The thrust of the ice could 
scour the shallows for miles, and bear along 
loose stones to the first beach whose sloping face 
would receive them. The density of the ar- 
rangement of these stones, and the abruptness 
of the front which they present to the sea, point 
to ice action rather than to that of waves alone. 
The wall is so high that those walking or driv- 
ing along the road cannot see the beach, while 
those bathing cannot see the country inland. 
Shut in between shingle and sea, we walked the 
length of the sand, and then climbed to the top 
of the bluffs of Middle Head. 



42 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

The evening before, while watching meteors 
from the beach, we had seen the sky above 
Middle Head suddenly lighted up by a bright 
fire. It lasted ten or fifteen minutes, then died 
away so quickly that we felt sure no building 
could have been destroyed. Now, on the nar- 
row path leading along the edge of the cliffs, we 
met three men. They bowed and touched their 
caps with the smiling politeness characteristic 
of most of the natives, Gaelic or Irish. I asked 
them what and where the fire had been ; and in 
a few words they said that Rory This had 
bought the right to cut grass on Sandy That's 
land, but that after the hay was made a dispute 
arose as to the price ; so the hay had been 
burned to quiet the trouble. I confess I could 
not reason out the process by which either Rory 
who had labored, or Sandy who had owned the 
grass, could find comfort in putting match to 
the hay. 

Some of the rock which supported Sandy's 
scorched hayfield, and which formed portions 
of the cliffs of Middle Head, contrasted strik- 
ingly with the prevailing red syenite of the 
Ingonish region. It was white ; not, however, 
like newly fallen snow, but like that which this 
world has somewhat soiled. Gypsum, or " plas- 
ter," as Cape Breton calls it, occurs in many 
places on the Bras d'Or and along the north 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 43 

coast. It suffers much more from the action of 
water and frost than the harder rocks surround- 
ing it, so that where it appears on the surface 
there are sure to be odd depressions in the soil, 
" sink holes," into which earth and trees have 
settled ; or, in cliff faces, deep hollows, coves, or 
caverns. The path along Middle Head follows 
closely the trend of the shore, and from it we 
found ourselves looking down into the most sug- 
gestive little cove that smugglers would care to 
own or story-writers to dream over. Its open- 
ing to the sea was narrow, and all its walls were 
high and steep, yet it had a tiny sand beach 
where a boat could land easily even if storm 
waves beat angrily on the stern cliffs outside. 

About halfway out on the Head we came upon 
a spring, — a cup-shaped hollow in the mud, 
filled with sun-warmed water, — which tempted 
us to rest near it under the low pines and 
spruces, where Cape Smoky could be seen across 
the bay, its richly toned cliffs wonderfully worn 
by waves, and its lofty head resting in the haze 
that gives the mountain promontory its name. 
Its outer point, which cuts in twain waves 
unchecked from the Grand Banks, is called 
"the Bill of Smoky." From this point back 
to the Ingonish light the syenite crags rise 
supreme above waves or ice. Near the light- 
house the lines of Smoky grow more gentle." 



44 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

The forest, which above the Bill is but a narrow 
line next the sky, slopes downward to the placid 
water inside the bar, and rolls on westward to 
join other expanses of spruce and birch, hem- 
lock and maple, which clothe the mountains and 
fill the river valley with soft foliage. While 
dreamily watching this fair northern picture, as 
it quivered in the heat of a half -tropical day, we 
were startled by a sudden cry which came from 
the waves far below. Then a man, with a coil 
of rope on his arm, passed us, and went cau- 
tiously to the edge of the precipice, over which 
he peered and made signals. Thoughts of smug- 
glers, of hidden wines brought by night from St. 
Pierre, of a discovery by the smugglers that we 
knew of their landing-place, and finally of the 
consequences of their discovery, floated through 
our minds, already saturated with the romantic 
elements of Ingonish scenery and life. Then 
more men came, and passed. They too crept to 
the edge and looked into the dizzy waves beneath. 
One of them lowered the rope over the cliff, and 
seemed to be trying to lasso something many 
feet below. Our curiosity prevailed over our 
timidity, and we drew near to the edge of the 
rock. The vision of smuggled champagne faded, 
and in its place was put the truth : that a sheep 
had gone over the cliff to a narrow sheK more 
than halfway down to the sea, and that these 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 45 

men were trying to rescue him alive, while a 
boy in a boat tossed by waves below shouted 
advice to them. 

Middle Head, and many a mile of coast north 
of it, is the home of the raven, or " big crow," 
as the Ingonish people call him. Close to the 
smuggler's cove a long, ragged point juts out 
from the cliffs. At its extremity huge masses 
of broken rock lie in the wash of the tide. As 
we passed this point, I saw an uncanny shape 
squatted upon its outer rock. It was a bird, 
web-footed, gaunt, black, vulture - headed, yet 
with a sac, a hideous skinny object, fitted like a 
pelican's pouch beneath its beak. A native pass- 
ing said it was a " shag," which meant nothing 
to me until I found that " shag " and " cormo- 
rant " were two equally expressive names for 
this same nightmarish bird of rock and wave. I 
crept out upon the point, first skulking behind 
wild rose bushes and goldenrod, and then coast- 
ing down a sandy slope, out of sight of the spec- 
tre I was stalking. Gaining the water's edge, I 
clambered along among huge rocks upon which 
seaweeds grew and trailed their fingers in the 
tide, and so came nearer and nearer to the shag. 
Suddenly I looked up as a huge shadow swept 
over me, and saw, black and big against the hot 
sky, a passing bird which watched me with keen 
eyes. Growing from the rocks which overhung 



46 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

me was a hunchbacked pine, the sport of every 
mocking wind that harried this rough coast, 
and in its bent branches sat five ravens. They 
croaked, but did not fly, satisfied to watch me 
as I squirmed over the rocks towards the black 
beast with a throat sac. In coloring and shape 
they were like crows, yet I knew they were not 
crows ; something in the shape of the head was 
different; they did not treat me as crows would 
have done. I felt that they were strangers. 

When I reached the last rock which could by 
any chance shield my body from the cormorant, 
I raised my head very slowly until my eyes came 
upon a level with the rock's upper surface. 
About twenty feet away, clasping with its hide- 
ous feet the last rock left naked by the tide, sat 
the shag. It seemed to me that it might be a 
bittern which, having offended against the gods, 
had been condemned to leave its beloved meadows 
and thickets, whispering rushes and perfumed 
grasses, in order to pass ages upon the shores of 
a sobbing ocean in which it should find no peace 
and no abiding-place. Its garb looked as sack- 
cloth and ashes might well look after a thorough 
soaking in salt water. When it craned upwards 
its skinny neck and panted, it reached the climax 
of its loathsomeness, for the livid sac pulsated 
under its distressed breathing. I had watched 
the horrid fish-eater long enough, so, rising to my 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 47 

full lieiglit, I had the satisfaction of seeing the 
monster shrink into itself with fear, turn its 
ugly countenance seaward, and then flap away 
over the hot, sparkling waves until almost out of 
sight. When half a mile out, it turned and flew 
slowly along the crest of the waves towards the 
rocky cliffs of Middle Head, and then dropped 
suddenly into the water, upon which it remained 
bobbing like a duck. 

Free from this incubus, I looked once more 
upon the home of the ravens, — the hunchbacked 
pine, the shattered rocks, and, far above them, 
the cliffs upon whose inaccessible ledges young 
ravens first see light. The surroundings were 
those of a sturdier bird than the crow. There 
were no gently sighing forests, waving corn-fields, 
or placid lakes here, but instead the stern crags, 
rude sea, and broken rocks, — makers of deep, 
angry music, harsh discords, and wild, sorrow- 
ful refrains. The crow boasts from the moment 
his loud voice first comes back to his ears from 
the echoing hillside, he steals from the time he 
sees the corn blades start from the furrow, and 
he shuns danger as often as the tread of man or 
deer snaps a dry twig in the forest. The raven's 
croak can wake no echo to match the sea's cho- 
rus, his food is not won by theft, and dangers 
which come from sky and tossing wave are not 
such as to stimulate craft or to inculcate wari- 
ness. 



48 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

II. 

BY SEA. 

All day long heat had quivered in the air and 
sparkled on the sea, but now, at evening, there 
was coolness creeping in from the ocean, past 
crag and sand, banishing ennui and tightening 
strong muscles as they tugged at the oars. The 
coolness and the wind seemed to have little to 
do with each other ; for the wind was westerly, 
and came down river from the forest-clad moun- 
tains, while the coolness came in from the east 
under the deep shadow which the red cliffs of 
Smoky cast upon the bay. Thump, thump, the 
oars pounded forward and back upon the thole- 
pins, and the boat moved slowly forward inside 
the bar towards the gut. The heavy sail did us 
no service ; merely made me more alone in the 
twilight, as I sat in the bow, with my back to 
the mast, and watched the waves heave under 
us. 

We were turning our backs to the hills now, 
and heading straight out through the gut. On 
the right was the lighthouse with its newly 
lit red star glowing inside the polished lenses. 
Above it towered the beginning of Smoky's 
cliffs, still deep red in the twilight, or green 
where the forest far above caught the last rays 



INGONISR, BY LAND AND SEA. 49 

of a fair sunset glow. On the left, the long 
beach and bar ended in a pier, with fish-houses 
and boats, men smoking, cod drying on the flakes, 
lobster pots piled up for the season, and collie 
dogs watching life go by on the tide, or dream- 
ing as they lay on the dry nets. Dead ahead, 
a fisherman's boat was coming in close to the 
pier, its oars splashing in the choppy sea where 
inner and outer waters wrestled in the nar- 
row pass. Our oars thumped louder, and we 
shot through the swirl, and out past light- 
house, pier, boats, rocks, and the residue of 
land and life, towards where the sea, the sky, 
and Smoky lived in a great dream together. 
Surely this place was beautiful, and to-night, as 
I sat in the bow alone, the flapping sail behind 
me, the rise and fall, the heave, surge, and 
wash of the sea lent a magic joy to the voyage 
we were taking out to the Bill of Smoky. I 
looked far ahead and strained my eyes to see 
what was beyond; and then I thought, what 
matters it to look, to strive to see an end, a goal, 
when there is no end, no goal, to see ? This is 
no mountain, with ridge after ridge to surmount, 
and an ultimate peak to conquer, with all its 
prizes of prostrate earth and nearer clouds to 
look upon. This is only the sea with its monoto- 
nous level, having in its endlessness no incen- 
tive to action, no stimulus to struggle. Still~ I 



50 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

kept gazing out into the distance, and wonder- 
ing whether some dim sail would not appear in 
the gloom, or some rock rise from among the 
billows for our boat to break itself against. 

As we glided on our undulating path across 
the restless water, the dark mass of Cape Smoky 
attended us on our right like a shadow. The 
waves splashed incessantly upon the broken 
rocks at the foot of the cliffs, and sometimes in 
the hollow of a wave not far from us a jagged 
mass of rock flashed menacingly for a moment 
before the water slid over it again and hid its 
threat from our eyes. The hand of time falls 
heavily upon the red sandstone, and every year 
huge pieces of rock drop into the sea and be- 
come the sport of the tide. At one point a but- 
tress of rock protruded into the bay, and through 
it I could see light. The busy waves and frosts 
had carved an arch in the stone, through which 
birds could fly and storm winds blow. Far up 
the cliff a brook, which had worked patiently 
downward from the soil on the summit of the 
mountain, appeared in a circular opening, and 
dashed its small spray seaward. Most brooks 
must fight their way over boulders and fallen 
trees, through dark ravines, by hot waysides and 
sleepy meadows, at last to win only a right to 
merge their lives in the greater life of the river. 
This brook had gone straight to its mother ocean, 



INGONISfl, BY LAND AND SEA. 51 

uncliecked, unturned, and wlien its clear, cool 
drops fell towards the sea they were as pure 
as when they left the sky. The brook seemed 
symbolic of some lives, which, though living out 
their appointed time, go back to the source 
of life without ever having been polluted by 
society, or lost in its sullen and ill-regulated 
current. 

Thump, thump, thump, the oars worked with 
their clumsy rhythm, urging us eastward, and out 
towards the line of rough water beyond the Bill. 
The swell grew stronger, and now and then the 
boat rose so high or fell so low that my dream 
was interrupted by the emphasis of the motion. 
Far behind us the red eye of the lighthouse 
glared at the mouth of the harbor, and marked 
upon each wave's edge the path by which we 
had come, close vmder the shelter of the cliifs. 
A few strokes more and we were abreast of the 
Bill, that ultimate wedge of rock which Smoky 
thrusts into the northern sea, piercing the cold 
waves, and dividing the fierce storm currents 
beatiuG: down from Newfoundland. The wind 
was fresher in the unprotected sea, and the 
lighthouse with its nestling lights upon the bar 
seemed much farther away than it had a mo- 
ment or two before. A sense of loneliness, al- 
most of danger, crept over us, and by common 
consent the boat was turned backward into the 



52 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

shelter of the great rock, and the homeward voy- 
age begun. 

It was now my turn at the oar, and a thrill 
passed through me as I grasped the great sweep 
and wrestled over it with the waves. Night had 
fallen. All color had died on the red cliffs of 
Smoky. Stars had burned their way into the 
dark blue sky, and among them stray meteors 
fell seaward, or glided athwart the constellations. 
A year before, I had sj)ent the long hours of 
the night on the peak of Chocorua, watching 
these wayward waifs of space as they danced 
behind the cloud curtains of the storm. Now, 
with all a Viking's zeal, I tugged at my big oar, 
pounded my tholepin, made deep eddies chase 
each other in the dark water, and breathed joy- 
ously deep breaths of the salt northern air. 
What contrasts man may make for himself, in 
his life, if he yields to the spirit of restlessness 
within him! The Vikings yielded to it, and 
swept the northern seas, and I felt in my weak 
arms something of their strength and wanton- 
ness as I urged the boat homewards under 
Smoky's shadow. Black rocks, placid sea, bright 
stars, dancing meteors, and breath of the north- 
ern ocean, — I had them all, even as the Norse- 
men had them. 

A faint protest came from the other side of 
the boat. We were not rowing a race ; there 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 53 

was no hurry ; and if I cut inshore any farther 
we should go on the rocks. So I eased my 
frantic stroke, and watched the phosphorescence 
play in my oars' eddies. In the sky, bright 
masses ploughed their way through our air, im- 
pelled by an unknown force, driven from an 
unknown distance, and aiming for an unknown 
fate. In the sea, bright atoms ploughed their 
way through the water and glowed in soft 
splendor. The meteors are inorganic, dead 
mysteries. The phosphorescence is an organic, 
living mystery. Yet it is no more imi3ossible to 
imagine the history and future of a body per- 
petually traveling through endless space than 
to try to count the numbers of these phosphor- 
escent myriads. Generally I have the feeling 
that science is bringing us nearer to a perception 
of what the vast creation is which surrounds 
us, but at times the greater truth flashes before 
my eyes, — that what we are really learning is 
not more than a drop in the limitless ocean of 
fact. 

The row back to the lighthouse seemed 
shorter than the voyage out, partly because we 
really went faster, and partly because we had 
less detail to look at, now that the night had 
covered the beauties of the many-toned cliffs 
and the distant mountains. When we shot 
through the gut from the bay to the inner basin. 



54 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

the air became damper and the darkness more 
intense. With caution and frequent peering 
ahead we rowed towards the creek in which we 
were to land. Here a shoal had to be avoided, 
there a fisherman's boat passed by. 

Now in the gloom we could discern a mass 
of willows in which the kingfishers had been 
sounding their loud call during the day, and be- 
yond them loomed up the timbers of the old 
mill whose wreck was to be our pier. Poor old 
mill, it had been starved to death by tariffs, a 
grim punishment for its slaughter of many a 
good king of the forest. We landed, and in the 
soft stillness made our stumbling way across 
field and pasture to the cosy Ingonish parlor, 
where, in strange contrast to rugged coast, and 
stern mountain, and the general simplicity of 
the fishermen's houses on the shore, we had 
found refinement, comfort, and open hospitality. 

Beyond the great wall of rounded stones, 
raised by ice and storm, lay the beach. The 
ripj)ling waves played softly upon the firm sand, 
making dainty lines across it. We could hear 
the murmur of those waves and the faint rustle 
of the breeze in the shrubbery. All was peace 
and gentleness, yet under that kindly music 
those who knew Ingonish Bay could hear other 
voices. High in the air the powers of the storm 
were holding council, and deep in the sea the 



INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 55 

tides were planning to hurl themselves upon the 
shore. It is always so by the northern ocean ; 
and when the waves break most lovingly upon 
Smoky, the old mountain and his children the 
fishermen are most alert for the tempest which 
is to follow. 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 

There are siren voices at Ingonisli. I can say 
this with confidence, because I heard one, and it 
rings in my ears now, and will ring there as 
long as memory lasts. I was lying on the sun- 
lit sand outside the cobblestone wall of Ingonish 
South Bay beach, dreaming. To my right rose 
the red, forest-capped wall of Smoky, on my 
left was Middle Head, and behind me many a 
mountain side walled in the valley. Suddenly, 
the heavens, the bluffs, and the mountains gave 
out a sound which made my heart stand still. 
It had the force of thunder and the pitch of 
agony. I was told afterwards that the first time 
the sound startled Ingonish was at night, and 
that people fled from their houses or fell upon 
their knees, thinking the day of reckoning had 
come. Springing to my feet, I saw, coming 
slowly past the cliffs of Smoky and towards the 
lighthouse at the pier, a good-sized steamer. It 
was the Harlaw, from Halifax via the Bras d'Or 
lakes, on her way to Newfoundland. As I lay 
upon the sand, I had been dreaming of a voyage 
across those sixty miles of sea to the rock-bound 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 57 

island just out of sight below the ocean's cheek. 
The Har law's siren had banished the dream in 
more senses than one. To take the steamer now 
was impossible, and only by that steamer could 
I go to Newfoundland. 

The next morning, consequently, we turned 
our faces towards home, and started southward. 
Mr. Gillies also turned his face towards home, 
and started southward ; the difference being 
that in his case home was at Ingonish, north- 
ward, and that he faced it across a painful snarl 
of his own legs and arms, as he hung for dear 
life to the back of the wagon-seat, while I wal- 
loped his thin horse and enjoyed the comforts of 
the driver's cushion. Over the ferry, up Smoky, 
away from the home of the raven and the sweet 
charms of Ingonish, on, on, on we went, mile 
after mile, until the thin horse wearied of life, 
and the snarls in Mr. Gillies's legs caused him 
to groan aloud. At times I ventured on conver- 
sation with Mr. Gillies. When I spoke, and 
my quavering intonations reached his ears, a re- 
verberating " Sorr-r-r ? " was usually hurled at 
me with such force as to banish, momentarily, 
all idea of what it was I meant to say. An 
opinion from me was always indorsed by Mr. 
Gillies in one of two ways : warmly, by " Jist ; " 
less confidently, by "Aye — yi — yi," uttered 
with outward fervor. In an endeavor to learn 



58 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

sometliing of the fauna of the country, I in- 
quired whether the porcupine was found near 
Ingonish. Gillies assented promptly. I then 
asked how much one weighed when full grown. 
This staggered him, but after a pause he said, 
" Which kind of pine was you speaking of, 
sorr ? " 

Mr. Gillies's horse was not endearing in his 
qualities. In the first place, he was named 
"Frank," a circumstance I mentally resented; 
but what was more to the point, he had an evi- 
dent desire to spill us over the steepest bank 
he could find. When we were passing a most 
dangerous unfenced slide on Smoky, where a 
misstep meant a plunge hundreds of feet down 
into a rocky ravine, Gillies regaled us with a 
story of Frank's overturning the Gillies family 
on a river bank, " breaking the sleigh to pieces 
all right," and then bolting for home. As 
Frank and his wagon constituted the only con- 
veyance within twenty miles that could carry 
three persons, it was not alone love of life which 
made me watch the beast with unceasing soli- 
citude. Thanks to vigilance and the whip, he 
carried us down Smoky, past Big Kory's, Sandy 
McDonald's, and so on to the valley of Indian 
Brook, where we planned to " stay the night " 
at Angus McDonald's. Standing on the bridge 
above Indian Brook, we saw the best fisherman 



TEE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 59 

on tlie North Sliore casting his sixty-foot line 
with unerring hand over the dark pool from 
which he had just taken a three-pound trout. 
In his creel lay also a five-pound trout, and his 
man whispered to us that a ten-pound salmon 
had been taken by the same magic line that 
morning. Battles between big salmon, or trout, 
and man armed with his cobweb line and tiny 
hook command admiration, but they make the 
inane hooking of six-inch trout in our New 
England brooks seem contemptible. 

The next morning I was up and dressed at 
half past three, standing on Angus McDonald's 
doorstep, and rejoicing in the sense of lightness, 
purity, and strength which comes at dawn. 
When Gabriel blows his trumpet, I hope he will 
select the moment before sunrise for his sum- 
mons. 

Eastward, the placid sea reached away to- 
wards Newfoundland, St. Pierre, and the red 
sun. Newfoundland and St. Pierre were hiding 
behind the curve of the sea, but the sun was 
climbing above it, and peering, dim-eyed, through 
the fog. Westward, beyond a dew-drenched 
swale, rose the hills covered with balsam, black 
spruce, and white spruce. Darkness still per- 
vaded the woods, for the sun was too dim to 
illuminate their pinnacles, or even to gild the 
sea or tint the sails of the fishing-smacks, al- 



60 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

ready several miles from shore. Sheep and cows 
stood in the curving meadow, and a young bull, 
their leader, looked at me more sleepily than 
sullenly as I passed him. The dew was cold on 
the grass, and it soaked my feet ; but the dew 
and its chill were part of the hour, so serene 
and pure, quite as much as were the whistle of 
a crossbill which flew past overhead, and the 
matins of the juncos which they were singing in 
their forest cloisters. I crossed the meadow, 
and followed the road through the spruces and 
over the bridge above Indian Brook. A narrow 
footpath led from the farther end of the bridge 
up the northern bank of the stream. Now it 
passed through groves so dark and silent that 
night seemed still supreme ; then it came out 
into twilight at the edge of the bank above the 
water, and showed me that, little by little, it 
was climbing above the pools and rapids as it 
followed the channel back into the mountains. 

After walking for half an hour, I came to a 
sharp bend in the river, which had previously been 
flowing east, but which here came from the 
north, emerging from between steep cliif s, to roar 
and foam over a sloping bed of broken rock. 
Above the music of the rapids I could hear the 
splash of a cascade, and by peering through the 
trees I could see the white form of a waterfall, 
half concealed by the foliage on the other bank. 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 61 

A tributary stream approached Indian Brook at 
this point, and fell from a hilltop into a mossy- 
basin among the large trees on the western shore. 
To gain a nearer view of its beauty, I clambered 
and slid down the high, steep bank, to the brow 
of which the path had brought me. On reaching 
the level of the water, I realized more fully the 
nature of the place I was in. High forest-clad 
hills rose on every side, inclosing the river, so 
that its only method of escape was through deep 
rifts cut into their slopes. The part of the stream 
which I had followed consisted of broad and deep 
pools of brownish water alternating with rapids. 
Sometimes one bank was of rock, and the other 
of gravel ; sometimes both shores, although steep, 
were wooded almost to the edge of the current. 

Looking upstream, I saw that the scenery 
above me was even more striking than that below. 
The river came from between abrupt rocky walls. 
Its waters were deep, slow, and foam-flecked. 
They came out of a vale of shadows, and I knew, 
on the word of an Ingonish fisherman, that some- 
where within those shadows there was a water- 
fall, singularly beautiful, though unknown save 
to a few. 

Directly in front of me, the story of the river 
seemed to be told on a small scale. Far up 
against the sky was a dip or notch in the moun- 
tain wall. Through it came the brook which 



62 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

joined tlie river at my feet. To reacli this lower 
level the dancing waters must fall as many yards 
as they advanced. Their last leap made the cas- 
cade whose splashing filled the glen with music. 
I forded the icy river, and entered the chamber 
in the side of the western bank which held the 
cascade, and its screen of trees, ferns, and mosses. 
Since leaving the open meadow by the sea and 
entering the dark forest, I had felt the sjoell of 
the wilderness resting upon me, the sense of age, 
beauty, purity, persistent force ; all existing or 
working without man's knowledge or approval, 
yet being the very essence of this dewy land of 
twilight. On coming to this grotto of rushing 
waters. Nature seemed for the moment to find a 
voice with which to tell of her wonderful j)ower. 
The falling spray was singing of the sea from 
which had been taken into heaven, and to which 
it was hastening back after a new life. Its cycle 
is but the emblem of all ebbing and flowing life. 
The spell of the wilderness grew stronger upon me, 
and when, suddenly, I thought how many wearied 
souls there were in great cities who would love to 
see this beautiful, hidden spot, something akin to 
shame for my own race came also into my mind.. 
If man came here, would he not destroy ? His 
foot would trample, his hand deface, and finally 
he would cut down the firs, blast out the rock, 
choke the salmon with sawdust, and leave the 



THE HOME OF LOOS CAP. QS 

glen to fire and the briers which follow flame. 
It is always so ; those of us who love nature and 
the beautiful are only the few, sure to be thrust 
aside by the many who value bread or riches 
higher than the fair earth's bloom. 

Leaving the cascade, I climbed the hill over 
which it fell, until I reached a level terrace about 
two hundred feet above the river bed. There 
was no path here, so I simply pushed on north- 
ward, following the general direction of the gorge, 
and listening for the heavy rumble of Indian 
Brook Falls. The forest through which I was 
walking closely resembled northern New Hamp- 
shire timber. Here were white spruces with 
long, slender, light-colored cones pointing down- 
wards ; black spruces with dark cones, also pend- 
ent ; balsam firs with erect purplish cones ; hem- 
locks, pines, yellow birches, big, clean-limbed 
beeches, a few maples and poplars, and the moun- 
tain ash. I saw juniper, but no hobblebush. 
Hastening through the dimly lighted vistas, I 
was startled by a loud, angry cry which rang out 
suddenly among the treetops. I stopped, and 
peered upwards. Another scream echoed from 
the hills, and two great birds with fierce and 
eager eyes swooped towards me, pausing among 
the branches to watch me with hostile curiosity. 
Their coloring and size made me confident that 
they were goshawks. When a smaller hawk, 



64 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

holding a squirrel in its clutch, flew into a neigh- 
boring tree, one o£ the goshawks hurled itself 
upon the intruder and drove it from view. They 
would have liked to expel me in the same way, 
and their startling cries and resentment made me 
feel as though I had no place or part in their 
great solitude. Nevertheless I pushed on, feel- 
ing somewhat as one does who invades a cathedral 
by night, and hears his clumsy footsteps protested 
by the echoes in the vaulted roof. 

An hour and a half, or more, after leaving 
Angus McDonald's, I heard the booming sound 
of the Indian Brook Falls. Pushing through the 
last screen of fallen timber and underbrush, I 
gained the crumbling edge of cliff overhanging 
the river. Far beneath, the foam-flecked water 
crept along the bottom of a daTk, narrow canon. 
It passed away southward between lofty walls of 
rock, above which stood the forest and the higher 
slopes of the mountains. The space into which I 
was looking was a vast, circular pit, a pothole of 
enormous size worn in the rock by whirling water 
during unnumbered ages. Its height seemed 
to be as great as its diameter, and either would 
be measured by hundreds of feet. Although at 
high water Indian Brook doubtless covers the 
whole bottom of this punch bowl, at this time 
a long, slender sand spit projected from the west- 
ern wall to the middle of the dark brown pool. 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 65 

It was an index finger pointing towards the 
falls, whose solemn music made sky and moun- 
tain vibrate in perpetual unison. 

The northern curve of the rock basin's wall 
was broken by a narrow, perpendicular rift reach- 
ing from the sky down to within sixty or eighty 
feet of the surface of the pool. This was the 
door through which Indian Brook had, since the 
time of glaciers, sprung from the bosom of the 
mountain, and by which it was now pouring its 
compressed mass, with a single motion, into the 
dark depths of the basin. Looking through 
the rift, I could discern only a few yards of flat 
water racing towards its fall, and black walls of 
rock scowling upon the mad stream which swept 
past them. These walls rose to meet the spruce 
forest ; the forest sloped far upwards to meet the 
pale blue sky, and the slender points of the high- 
est trees were now faintly touched by the morn- 
ing sun. There was no trace of man in this soli- 
tude, yet it was eloquent with beauty and power. 
What the high altar is to the dimly lighted ca- 
thedral, this hollow in the heart of the Cape 
Breton hills is to the wilderness which surrounds 
it. The altar is the focus for every eye, every 
moving lip, every prayerful heart. This vale 
of falling waters is the focus of the beautiful 
lines of the mountains, down which sunlight 
and shadows steal in turn, along which brooks 



66 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

liurry to the river, and through which the mov- 
ing life of the forest takes its way. The ancient 
hemlock bends towards it, the falling boulder 
plunges downwards to it, and the wind coming 
through the embrasures and over the ramparts of 
the mountains, blows to it, ruffling the treetops 
in passing. The altar is the focus of man's senses 
and thoughts, but it is only an emblem even to 
him. This scene of beauty is a focus of Nature's 
deepest and purest life ; and though in it man 
has no place, it does not on that account lack mean- 
ing or significance. Man is a masterful figure 
in the drama of creation, but he is not all, nor 
even half, what the world has long been taught 
to consider him. Perhaps he has been studied 
too much ; certainly Nature, unspoiled by his 
greed, has not been studied enough or loved 
enough. Standing alone in that fair solitude, as 
much alone as on some atoll in a distant sea, I 
felt as though I might know man better, see him 
in stronger contrasts and clearer lights, if I could 
live apart from him longer in such still, calm, 
holy places as Indian Brook canon. 

As I walked swiftly back to Angus McDon- 
ald's, the sunlight grew strong in the woods, and 
shone kindly on the amber waters of the river. 
A hot day was beginning, and I sighed to think 
of the twenty-five mile drive to Bad deck, — sighed 
not only on my own account, but on account of 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 67 

Gillies's legs and back, bent and doubled under 
the seat, and on account of the horse Frank, and 
the whip. Something which had pervaded the 
woods in the early morning twilight had gone 
out of them now. The enchantment of the wil- 
derness seemed left behind, localized in and near 
those beautif id falls. Scolded by Hudson's Bay 
chickadees and three-toed woodpeckers, I hurried 
on to the highway, the meadow, and the view of 
the sparkling sea. Yes, Frank was already har- 
nessed, and the twenty-five mile drive waiting to 
be begun. 

When Frank brought us to the valley of the 
Barasois, we decided to turn inland, avoiding 
Torquil McLean's ferry, Englishtown, and the 
east side of St. Anne's Bay, in order to see the 
picturesque North River country, which could be 
reached by ascending the Barasois a few miles, 
and then passing behind St. Anne's Mountain, 
so as to approach the bay from the westward. 
This we did successfully, and arrived at Baddeck 
by supper time. The bridge by which this road 
crosses North River is one of the most remark- 
able objects in Cape Breton. Fairly good roads 
characterize the neighborhood. They are good 
enough to lead a driver to expect sound bridges, 
but instead he finds death-traps. This particu- 
lar bridge is very long, and upon much of it the 
flooring is laid parallel to the direction of the 



68 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

bridge. The ancient planks have decayed, until 
many holes have been made in them large enough 
for a horse's foot to pass through, while in long 
sections of the bridge the spaces between the 
planks are so wide that first one wheel, and then 
another, slips down, until the hub strikes. Need- 
less to say, we walked across that bridge, while 
Gillies and Frank danced and pranced onward 
before us ; Gillies distracted to keep his toes away 
from Frank's hoofs, and Frank distracted to keep 
his hoofs away from the holes in the planks. 

The next two days were rainy : Sunday, while 
we rested in Baddeck, and Monday, when we 
bade farewell to the Bras d'Or. In a drizzle we 
steamed from Baddeck to Grand Naj-rows, — I 
recall a flock of ducklings swimming madly away 
from the steamer; we breakfasted at the Nar- 
rows, — I remember seeing a heron catching 
frogs in a meadow ; in a drizzle we crossed the 
Strait of Canso, — I recall a grouj) of young 
Micmac Indians coasting down a slippery bank 
to the water's edge, crawling up and coasting 
(that is, sitting^ down again, until fog hid 
them from us, and us from them ; still in driz- 
zle we passed Tracadie with its Trappist monas- 
tery, and Antigonish with the pretentious cathe- 
dral of the Bishop of Arichat ; in drizzle hours 
came and hours went, until, late in the afternoon, 
we passed through the Cobequid Mountains, 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 69 

wliicli I recall as gaunt hillsides swept by cloud, 
steam, smoke, and stinging rain ; and then we 
were dropped in the wilderness, near a dirty 
tavern, at a place called Springhill Junction. 

Drizzle and cinders were here, too ; but my 
mind awoke from a semi-comatose condition as 
soon as we left the train. The possibility of 
having to spend a night at the Lorne, or the 
Forlorn, or whatever the terrible tavern was 
called, revived my rain-sodden faculties, and I 
began to ask questions : " Is there a train away 
from here to-night ? " " Yes, one to Springhill." 
" How soon will it go ? " " Don't know ; 
when the conductor pleases, or when he is wired 
to go." Then I found the conductor. " How 
soon do you start ? " " Don't know. Am waiting 
for orders." " Why not start now?" "Train 
two hours late from St. John ; may have to wait 
for it." "Will you wait until I get supper?" 
" Oh, yes, certainly. Go ahead ; no hurry." 

After supper we entered our train, which con- 
sisted of a big engine and one car, which was 
baggage and third-class combined. We were at 
the mercy of the Cumberland Coal Company, 
which owns a bit of road running from its mines 
at Springhill north five miles to meet the Inter- 
colonial rails in the wilderness where we were 
waiting, and south twenty-seven miles to Parrs- 
boro on the Basin of Minas, near Blomidon. 



70 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Darkness was coming, yet still we waited. Pres- 
ently a message came. The coal king or his 
viceroy had perhaps finished his supper, and 
remembered to release us. Yes, we were to wait 
no longer for the Moncton train, but to start for 
Springhill. The road was ballasted with soft 
coal dust; even the hollows were filled with 
wasted fuel, which was cheaper for the purpose 
than gravel. The conductor came in, and I 
asked him about Springhill. What was it like ? 
" A coal-mining town, with thousands of miners, 
pits, shafts, dirt, poverty, and the memory of 
the horror of three years ago, when scores of 
widows and hundreds of fatherless children wept 
and wailed round the pit mouths after the explo- 
sion which suffocated their bread-winning hus- 
bands and fathers." " And must we stay there 
all night ? " He hesitated. " Perhaps not ; an 
engine may be run down to Parrsboro with some 
freight cars. But the lady?" and he looked 
inquiringly at my wife. 

Soon, through the dismal rain and smoke, we 
saw the flaring lights near the pits, and heard 
the throbbing heart of the great mine-pump. A 
few dim lamps burned in streets or dingy win- 
dows, but the town looked smothered in wet coal 
dust and misery. A whisper came in my ear, — 
" Better to ride to Parrsboro on the engine than 
to spend a night here ; " and my heart assented. 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 71 

We and our trunk were turned out upon the 
dirty platform, and lanterns were held close to 
us, while Springhill inspected its unwilling 
guests. I pleaded with the railway men, the 
conductor, the engineer, and the fireman. Might 
we not ride on the engine, in a freight car, some- 
where, anywhere, rather than stay here ? They 
consented, and an engine came clanging out of 
the blackness, with a freight car attached. Into 
this freight car we and our trunk were put, and 
left there in utter darkness, alone with the steam- 
steed, and he ready to leap southward on his 
wet rails the moment hand touched the lever. 
The rain splashed on the roof, wind wailed 
through sheds .and cars near us, flames flickered 
round the pit's mouth, and the throbbing pump 
kept on with its wearisome pulsation, until our 
hearts and lungs seemed forced to keep time 
with its rhythm. Then a lonesome watchman 
came and talked to us, and left a lantern, which 
sputtered, smoked, and went out. After a long 
interval a big miner came and sat with us. He 
told gruesome tales of the explosion. " Them 
doctors they had were to blame for many a good 
man's death. They looked at the boys as they 
hoisted them up from the pit, and said ' Dead,' 
when they was n't no more dead than we be this 
night. They did n't know what they was talk- 
in' about. Some of us took a young fellow they 



72 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

said was dead, and we covered Mm over with 
dust and let him lie till the damp was drawn 
out of him, and he 's walkin' round with the best 
of us to-day. The damp was in them, — that 
was all, — and the doctors did not know how to 
draw it out." 

The man's deep voice was full of mournful 
feeling, the darkness added pathos to his story, 
and the pump with its never-ending beat seemed 
to bear witness to all he said. More than an 
hour had passed, and still we sat and waited ; 
but the end was near. The engineer passed, 
and gave a word of cheer. Then the conductor 
climbed in beside us, and we were off. It might 
have been down the bottomless pit's own mouth 
that we were tearing, for all that eye or ear could 
tell. Forest hemmed us in, and intense dark- 
ness hung over us. Occasionally, when coal 
was hurled into the fire, a spasm of red light 
passed over the whizzing gloom outside ; but it 
only made our eyeballs weary, for we could dis- 
tinguish nothing. Perhaps we went a mile a 
minute ; perhaps not. Freight cars have no 
tender springs, yet the motion was not especially 
uncomfortable until we began to slow up on 
nearino' Parrsboro. Then dislocation was threat- 
ened; but a moment later we were using our 
trunk as a step to dismount on, and saying a 
cheerful good-night to our companions. 



THE HOME OF G LOOS CAP. 73 

Parrsboro harbor at low tide is a sight to be- 
hold. Coming from the Bras d'Or, where the 
tide rises only a few inches, to the head of the 
Bay of Fundy, where it rises thirty feet, made 
us feel as though something must be wrong with 
us or the moon. The wharves reared themselves 
upon a forest of slimy piles, and far below them, 
reclining in all kinds of postures upon the mud, 
were sailing-vessels of various sizes. A schooner, 
ready for launching at two p. M., was perched 
upon such a height that it was easier to believe 
that it was to be launched into space than into 
water which was to come from some unknown 
point, and in a few hours fill this empty harbor 
to its brim. However, the tide came in, not like 
a tidal wave, with a solid front, a hiss, a roar 
and rush, as I had always imagined Fundy tides 
to appear, but little by little, as though it were 
trying to catch us unawares in its horrid depths. 
Of course we saw the launch, and felt a thrill as 
the clumsy little tub darted down the greased 
track, and became rather a graceful creature 
when fairly afloat. The tub's first stej) in the 
world was not wholly dignified. When the last 
prop had been knocked from under her, and she 
still sat motionless in her bed of cold grease, the 
master workman cried out, " Shake her up, 
boys ! " And forthwith the five-and-twenty ur- 
chins on her decks rushed up the rigging, and 



74 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

swayed and yelled, until their kicking gave tke 
desired start to ker career. 

The launch was on August 15, and it was on 
the following morning, immediately after break- 
fast, that we resumed our journey by driving 
across the neck of land which leads from Parrs- 
boro to Parrsboro Pier and Partridge Island. 
We wished to reach the shore of the Minas 
Channel at a point where we could look directly 
down the Bay of Fundy between Cape Split and 
Cape Sharp. The mingling of sea and land in 
this region alffords endless temptation for sketch- 
ing. If it were a part of the United States in- 
stead of being, nationally, neither fish, flesh, nor 
good red herring, it would be one of the favorite 
resorts of our amateur artists and summer tour- 
ists. As matters stand, Blomidon on the one 
shore, with its forest-crawned palisades reaching 
down to Cape Split, and on the other Partridge 
Island, with sculptured rocks around which the 
tides of Fundy surge and eddy ; Cape Sharp, red- 
walled and spruce-capped ; and even Parrsboro 
itself, where one must eat and sleep, are places 
hard to reach promptly and comfortably. We 
had been forced to storm Parrsboro by night in 
a rain-soaked freight car. We escaped from it 
by a steamer so tiny and primitive in form that 
I wondered whether it had not in years past 
seen service as a towboat in New York harbor. 



THE HOME OF G LOOS CAP. 75 

From the liiliside above Miiias Channel we 
saw several large ships lying at anchor in the 
protected water between Cape Sharp on our 
right, westward, and Partridge Island on our 
left, eastward. The tide was coming in beyond 
them, and even at a distance the channel seemed 
like a river flowing from Fundy into Minas Ba- 
sin. To gain a nearer view of it, and a slightly 
different outlook, we drove along the shore until 
we reached Parrsboro Pier, which is in a shel- 
tered nook under the lee of Partridge Island. 
The tiny tub which was to take us across to the 
Blomidon side lay at the foot of the pier, wait- 
ing for the tide to lift it high enough for j)as- 
sengers to find it. From the pier a ridge of peb- 
bles runs across to Partridge Island, and on this 
natural causeway we strolled over to nature's 
Mont St. Michel, with its grottoed cliffs rising 
on high from the raging waters, and its dark 
pinnacles of spruce piercing the sky. A wind- 
ing avenue leads through moss-bearded trees to 
the island's summit, ending upon a grassy shelf 
where the rocks overhang the channel, and where 
either folly or courage is needed to induce the 
visitor to stand upon the dizzy brink and look 
down, down, into the hurrying, eddying tide be- 
low. My childish imaginings of Fundy tides 
were all satisfied here, if they had been disap- 
pointed in Parrsboro harbor. The eager rush, 



76 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

whirl, and hiss of that vast mass of water, as it 
surged past, told of the limitless strength of old 
ocean, far away at Fundy's mouth, heaving and 
pushing its way into bay and channel, basin and 
cove, with woe and destruction for anything op- 
posing its mad progress. 

Cape Split and Cape Sharp seemed monu- 
ments to the passion and cruelty of this tide. 
Sharp, on the northern side of the channel, rears 
its mangled face, and tells of ages of horrid con- 
test with tides and storms, grinding ice below, 
and cleaving, wedging ice above. Split, on the 
southern side, is a perpetual reminder of the 
Micmac legends of the deeds of Glooscap. A 
huge fragment of the palisades — cliffs which 
reach from Blomidon seven miles along the 
Minas Channel to Split — appears at a distance 
to have broken from the projecting end of the 
cape, and to lean outward over the bay, its sharp 
sides rising to a toothlike point. A broad sec- 
tion of cliff next to it is also separated from the 
mass of the palisades by a deep cleft. The Mic- 
mac story runs that Grlooscap, angry with the 
monster beaver for building a dam from Blomi- 
don across the Minas Channel, freed the end of 
the dam on the northern or Parrsboro shore, so 
that the released waters, rushing towards Fundy, 
swung the dam round violently, thus forming the 
palisades, and leaving the broken end showing 
at Cape Split. 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 77 

A slirill whistle summoned us from Partridge 
Island to tlie deck of the Evangeline, as the 
steam tub is called which sails from Parrsboro 
Pier, across the mouth of Minas Basin, under 
Blomidon, past the Pereaux shore, and into 
Kingsport, whence a branch railway runs to 
Kentville. When a series of whistles had gath- 
ered together upon the Evangeline's deck all the 
floating population within hearing of the pier, 
amounting in all to seven souls, we puffed out 
past Mont St. Michel into the Fmidy maelstrom. 
Why I did not follow the forcible example of 
some of the passengers and retire to the dark in- 
terior of the tub for secluded misery, I know 
not ; but I did not, and, moreover, I was not 
seasick a moment during the pitching and toss- 
ing which lasted until we approached Kings- 
port. The fury of the water which surrounded 
us was marvelous, considering that there were 
no great waves, and no storm to make waves. 
True, the wind blew hard, and cold rain beat 
upon us spitefully, stinging like hail : but it was 
not the wind which made the fury of the sea. 
Looking westward down the Minas Channel in 
the direction of Fundy, we saw boiling, whirling, 
eddying water coming towards us. We felt it, 
too ; for when a great whirl struck the tub, its 
stern fell off, and its head swung round a dozen 
points from the true course. The visible move- 



78 FROM BLOMIDON TO 8M0KY. 

ment of separate masses of tlie water reminded 
me of White Mountain rivers in freshet time. 
It was uncanny, out there miles from land, to 
have the sea open and allow a great gush of 
water to rise up and spread itself out as though 
forced from a submarine duct. The Evangeline 
struggled hard with the swift current, but it car- 
ried her far out of the direct course towards 
Blomidon, and it was only by repeated rallies 
that we were kept from being swept well out 
into Minas Basin. 

As we neared Blomidon the distinctive out- 
lines of the noble bluff were lost. The sturdy 
profile fell back into line with the palisades, and 
it was hard to say just what j)art of the cliffs 
which we were passing furnished the bold fea- 
tures so familiar from a distance. A moment 
later, Cape Split and the distant palisades passed 
from view, then Cape Sharp was concealed, and 
soon the profi.le of Blomidon began to grow 
again, as all that lay northward and westward of 
it was hidden behind its simple but severe con- 
tour. 

Our ever ready guide, philosopher, and friend 
remarked, before we had fairly set foot on Kings- 
port Pier, that seldom though it might be that 
man stood on Partridge Island in the morning 
and on the top of Blomidon in the afternoon, he 
wished us, nevertheless, to accomplish the feat. 



THE HOME OF G LOOS CAP. 79 

Accordingly, dinner at the cosiest little hotel in 
Nova Scotia was treated with scant courtesy, and 
we were soon speeding over red mud roads to- 
wards Blomidon. In one place, which I remem- 
bered puzzling over, through my glass, from the 
Look-off, three weeks before, we had our choice 
of driving along the top of an old Acadian dike, 
or of following the level of the reclaimed ^9re 
just inside of it. Like our New England stone 
walls, the Acadian dikes are a monument to the 
patience of the makers of America. It is weari- 
some to consider the millions of hours of labor 
buried in such memorials. 

After crossing the Pereaux valley we drew 
near to Blomidon, and saw the narrow red beach 
and water- worn cliffs extending far out into the 
Minas waters. The tide was falling, and by the 
time we had climbed the height and returned, a 
broad beach would invite us to explore its sticky 
expanse, in search of minerals of many colors. 
So to the top we drove, easily, for the road was 
well made and not steep, — at least in New 
Hampshire eyes. Although we were now but 
half a thousand feet above the waves, while at 
Cape Smoky we had been twelve hundred, Blom- 
idon held its own in our hearts, and sent thrills 
through us by its views, westward, of the Bay of 
Fundy, now brilliant with sunlight ; of Isle au 
Haut, a blue cloud in the midst of the mostclis- 



80 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

tant sparkling waters ; and eastward, of the fair 
Minas Basin, bounded on the one hand by the 
Cobequid Mountains, and on the other by Grand 
Pre, the Gaspereaux, and the hills above the 
Avon, yet reaching between the two to the hori- 
zon line at the point where we knew Truro lay. 
The top of Blomidon is not the abode of storm 
winds alone, for two houses stand upon it, and 
the laughter of children rings cheerily among 
the evergreen groves. Much of it is pasture 
land, and not for cows alone, as I discovered 
when a huge sow came charging down upon me 
with hungry gruntings. The view, taken as a 
whole, was much like that from the Look-off, so 
we spent only a few moments on the summit, 
and then hastened to the beach below. 

The road led directly down to the edge of the 
sea ; so, defying Fundy tides, knowing this one 
to be still falling, we drove along the beach, 
until our horse's feet became balls of red mud, 
and the wagon wheels threatened to turn no 
more. Then we left the horse tethered to a 
stone, and picked our way beneath the sculp- 
tured cliffs, searching for amethyst, jasper, 
agates, and salmon - colored masses of fibrous 
gypsum. The cliffs were soft red sandstone with 
many layers of gray intermingled, and erosion 
had worn their faces into columnar forms of 
singular grace and beauty. At intervals, hun- 



THE HOME OF GLOOSCAP. 81 

dreds of pounds' weight of gypsum had dropped 
upon the shore, and been beaten into fragments 
by the sea. The beach was about half red mud, 
and half small stones and pebbles. Of pretty 
stones we could have carried home a ton, but of 
crystals or minerals of real interest we found 
few. The shore is as carefully gleaned for am- 
ethyst as Musketaquid meadows are for arrow- 
heads. 

Dewy twilight surrounded us before we could 
tear ourselves away from the fascination of the 
towering cliffs, red beach, purple shallows, and 
lapping waves. When we climbed back into the 
wagon, it was with the feeling that the spell of 
Blomidon and Smoky, of Minas Basin and the 
Bras d'Or, was broken at last, and that our faces 
were set in earnest towards Chocorua. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 

After traveling for two weeks through Cape 
Breton, on rail, steamboat, wagon, and my own 
legs, I felt sure that its distinctive tree was the 
spruce, its prevailing flower the eye-bright (^Eu- 
phrasia officinalis)^ and its most ubiquitous 
bird the junco. Certainly three more cheerful, 
sturdy, and honest elements could not be woven 
into every-day life, and they seem to me to be 
emblematic of the island province and its people. 
The junco was everywhere, in sunshine and in 
rain, at gray dawn and after dewy eve; in the 
spruces which watched the sea at Ingonish, and 
in the early twilight of inland Loch o' Law. 
He, she, and the infant juncos were at the road- 
side, in the fields, in the pastures, on the moun- 
tain top, and by the trout pool, and they were 
always busy, happy, and treating their neighbors 
as they liked to have their neighbors treat them, 
like brothers. These neighbors included song 
sparrows, white-throats, grass finches, yellow- 
rumped and black-and-white creeping warblers, 
blackcapped and Hudsonian titmice, some of the 
thrush family, and occasionally pine siskins. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 83 

Of the thrushes, the robin was by far the 
most numerous, noisy, and generally distributed. 
He was not, however, a bird of the lawn, the 
orchard, and the shade tree by the house door, 
but by preference a dweller in larch swamps 
and spruce thickets, secluded river beds and up- 
land forests. He was the first bird in every 
lonely grove or deep wood vista to give a note 
of alarm and warning to the neighborhood ; and 
the first to respond to a cry of fear or pain 
uttered by any other bird. The hermit thrush 
was present in fair numbers, and blessed the 
woods and pastures with his anthem. I saw 
Swainson's and gray-cheeked thrushes, but the 
catbird and thrasher were apparently unknown, 
as was also the veery. The robin's conduct 
made me feel as though he were not one and the 
same with the common New England dooryard 
birds, but of a race as different from theirs as the 
Cape Breton Highlander's stock is from that of 
the matter-of-fact Scotch mechanic of the cities. 
The people round Loch Ainslie and between 
Cape Smoky and St. Anne's Bay speak and think 
Gaelic ; and the robins in the Baddeck and Mar- 
garee woods speak and think a language of the 
forest and the glen, not of the lawn. 

One evening, as I lay on the sandy shore of 
Loch Ainslie, close to the mouth of Trout Brook, 
the spotted sandpipers of the lake told me a se- 



84 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

cret of their little lives wliich seemed well worth 
knowing. The evening air was full of rural 
music : the tinkle-tankle of cow^bells ; the clatter 
of tiny sheep -hoofs speeding over the wooden 
bridge ; the complaining of geese, homeward 
bound, by the roadside ; and the harsh, rattling 
cries of the kingfishers, which, half a dozen 
strong, persecuted the small fry of Trout Brook's 
limpid waters. A school of big trout could be 
seen lying sluggish at the bottom of the brook, 
and their little kinsfolk were jumping freely in 
all parts of the quiet water. Tiny flies hovered 
over the pools ; and if they touched, or almost 
touched, the water, agile fish flung themselves 
into the air after them. Again and again I cast 
my feathered fly upon the ripples ; but as no 
answering rise pleased my expectant nerves, I 
tossed my rod aside, and drifted on towards even- 
ing with the stream of life and light and color 
flowing over me. The bell -cow came to the 
stream and drank, then passed slowly up the 
road homewards ; a lamb, whimpering, followed 
his woolly parent to the fold ; the geese, with 
outstretched necks and indignant heads, scolded 
all who passed them ; and suddenly an eagle with 
mighty wing came sailing towards me across 
broad Ainslie's ripples, bound for his mountain 
loneliness. The sun had sunk below the western 
hills, — hills from whose seaward side Prince 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 85 

Edward Island could be seen as a long, low ha- 
ven for a sinking sun to rest upon ; tlie sky was 
radiant with color, and the lake's slightly ruffled 
surface took the color and glorified it in count- 
less moving lines of beauty. From the gold 
sky and over the gold water the black eagle 
came eastward, swiftly and with resistless flight. 
Nearer and nearer he came, until his image dwelt 
for a moment in the still stream, then vanished 
as he swept past above the bridge, and bore on- 
ward to the dark hills clad in their spruces and 
balsams. He seemed like the restless spirit of 
the day departing before the sweet presence of 
sleepy night. 

Below the bridge. Trout Brook runs a score 
of rods between sandy beaches to a bar which 
half cuts it off from the lake. Upon this bar 
sandpipers were gathering by twos and threes, 
until their numbers attracted my attention. I 
strolled slowly towards them, crossing wide lev- 
els of sand, from which coarse grasses, sedges, 
and a few stiff-stalked shrubs sprung in sparse 
growth, and upon which a few clusters of 
rounded stones broke the evenness of the beach. 
As I drew near the margin of the lake the sand- 
pipers rose, " peep-sweeting " as they flew, and 
with deeply dipping wings vibrated away over 
the water ; heading at first towards the fading 
sunset, then sweeping inshore again, and alight- 



86 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

ing within an eiglitli of a mile of me on tlie 
curved beach. Noticing that some of the birds 
had risen from among the grasses above the line 
of wave - washed sand, I lay down upon the 
ground, with the hope that some of them might 
return, and perhaps come near me. Scarcely 
had my outlines blended with the contour of the 
shore when the clear " peep, peep, peep " of the 
little teeterers was heard on both sides, as they 
came in from distant points along the shore. 
Sometimes twenty birds were in sight at once, 
flying low over the water, apparently guided by 
a common impulse to gain the part of the beach 
near which I was concealed. I lay motionless, 
my head resting upon my arm, only a few inches 
above the sand. As I lay thus, the grasses rose 
like slender trees against the pale tinting of the 
August sky, and lake, distant hill, and sky all 
took on more emphatic tones, and appeared to 
have firmer and more significant outlines. 

Slowly the light faded, and the line of clear- 
est color shrank to narrower and narrower lim- 
its along the distant hills. I had almost forgot- 
ten the birds, although small squads of them 
kept passing, or wheeling in upon the shining- 
edge of wet sand nearest me. Suddenly a white 
object glided among the grass stems, only a few 
feet from my face. It paused and teetered, then 
slid along out of sight into a thicket of grasses. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 87 

I sliarjDeiied my vision and hearing, and found 
that all around me tiny forms were moving 
among the weeds, and that groups of birds 
seemed to be collecting in answer to low calls 
which suggested the warm, comfortable sound 
which young chickens make as they nestle to 
sleep under their mother. The sandpipers were 
going to bed in the grass forest, and I was lying 
in the midst of their dormitory, like sleepy Gul- 
liver among the Lilliputians. I might have re- 
mained quiet longer had the peeps and I been 
the only living creatures on the Trout Brook 
beach, but mosquitoes and gnats were present, 
and the waving grass tips tickling my face made 
them appear even more numerous than they 
really were. So at last, when stars began to ap- 
pear in the sky, I rose abruptly to my feet. Had 
I exploded a mine, the whir and rush which fol- 
lowed my arising could not have been more sud- 
den. It was really startling, for in a second the 
air was filled with frightened birds flying from 
me towards the lake. How many there were I 
cannot say, nor even guess, but it seemed to me 
that all the sandpipers which patrolled the sandy 
shores of Ainslie must have been gathered to- 
gether on that one small area of beach, bent on 
finding safety or a feeling of security in close 
association through the night hours. 

Once or twice I have met the Hudson's Bay 



88 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

titmouse in the Chocorua country in winter, but 
I had never seen him in numbers or in summer 
until I reached Cape Breton, and found him 
perfectly at home in its pasture and roadside 
thickets as well as in the deep forest. He is a 
cheaper edition of the common chickadee, who, 
on the same ground, excels him in many ways. 
His voice is feebler and husky. What he says 
sounds commonplace, and his manner of approach 
lacks the vigilant boldness of the blackcap. His 
brown head is readily distinguished from the 
black crown of his more sprightly relative, though 
it is likely to be looked at closely merely to con- 
firm the impression already conveyed by his voice 
that he is not the common chickadee, but a new 
friend well worth knowing. Apparently, in 
Cape Breton, he outnumbered our common tit- 
mouse by ^YQ or six to one, yet the blackcap 
was generally distributed and was as numerous 
near Ingonish as farther south. Of the black- 
cap's friends, the white and the red breasted 
nuthatches, I saw nothing. Once at Margaree 
Forks I heard the " quank " of the red-breasted, 
but I failed to see the speaker, and had the note 
been less peculiar I should have doubted really 
having heard it. 

About sunset on August 5, I was seated in an 
evergreen thicket a mile or more back of the 
village of Baddeck. By " squeaking " I had 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 89 

drawn near me a mob of wliite-throats, juncos, 
both kinds of chickadees, ruby-crowned king- 
lets, and of warblers the yellow-rumped, black- 
throated green, Nashville, black-and-white creep- 
ing, and the gorgeous black-and -yellow, as well 
as robins, a purple finch, and some young flick- 
ers. Suddenly I heard an unfamiliar bird note, 
a harsh, loud call, which, without much consid- 
eration, I attributed to geese, great numbers of 
which are kept by the Cape Breton farmers. 
After an interval of several minutes the cries 
were repeated, and this time it occurred to me 
that geese were not likely to be wandering in a 
hackmatack swamp just at sunset, especially as 
the sky foretold rain and the wind was backing 
round into the east. So I left my thicket in 
search of the maker of the strange sounds. A 
path led through the larches to a clearing sur- 
rounded by a typical Cape Breton fence, or se- 
rial woodpile, which appeared to be built on the 
Kentucky principle of being " horse high, pig 
low, and bull proof," and consequently impregna- 
ble to turkeys, geese, and sheep. The moment I 
emerged from the trees a fine marsh hawk rose 
from the ground and floated away out of sight. 
While watching him, a flash of white on the fence 
drew my eyes to the edge of the woods, and there, 
to my delight, I saw five of the most charming 
denizens of the great northern forests : birds in 



90 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

quest of which I had traveled miles through the 
New Hampshire mountain valleys, always in vain. 
As I turned, one of these beautiful creatures, 
with wings widespread and tail like a fan, was 
sailing just above, but parallel with, the fence. 
He paused upon it, looked towards me with his 
large, fearless eyes, and then noisily tapped a 
knot in the upper pole with his beak. " Moose 
birds at last! " I exclaimed, and at once felt the 
strongest liking for them. There was nothing 
in their appearance to confuse them with their 
wicked cousins the blue jays ; in fact, I found my 
instincts rebelling at the idea of both being Cor- 
vidce. Their large rounded heads had no sign of 
a crest, and the white on the crown and under the 
chin gave them a singularly tidy look, as though 
their gentle faces were tippeted. Their plu- 
mage as a whole was Quaker-like in tone, so that, 
considering their demure and gentle bearing, the 
name " Whiskey Jack," applied to them by the 
lumbermen, seemed to me absurdly inappropriate. 
While I watched these birds, they moved 
slowly along the fence towards the swamp, com- 
ing nearer and nearer, and finally passing within 
about fifty feet of me. One of them was a 
young bird, with but little white on his dusky 
brown head ; two others were females, also less 
white than the males. Finally they vanished in 
the swamp, the last bird going upstairs on a 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 91 

dead tree in true jay fashion, and then pkmging, 
head foremost, into the shadows of the grove be- 
neath. As I left the larches behind me, the 
same strange, harsh cry echoed from its depths, 
and I accepted it as the moose bird's prophecy 
of impending rain. It is an odd fact that these 
birds die if they become chilled after being wet 
in a heavy rain, and on this occasion they were un- 
doubtedly seeking dense foliage to protect them 
from the storm which began a few hours later. 

Of the Cape Breton warblers, the black-and- 
yellow were among the most numerous, and by 
all means the most brilliant in plumage. When- 
ever I called the birds together, the magnolias 
were sure to appear, their gleaming yellow 
waistcoats showing afar through the trees, and 
contrasting with their dark upper plumage and 
the cool gray of their caps. One male redstart 
seemed the most richly marked bird of his spe- 
cies that I had ever met with. The black ex- 
tended much lower on the breast than usual, and 
the vermilion which lay next it burned like a hot 
coal. Summer yellow-birds were common in the 
meadow borders, where Maryland yellow-throats 
also abounded ; a single black - throated blue 
warbler appeared to me near Baddeck ; one 
anxious mother Blackburnian scolded me in the 
dark forest near the falls of Indian Brook ; and 
a few Canadian fly-catching warblers flashed in 



92 FROM BLOMIDOX TO SMOKY. 

and out among their dark evergreen haunts in 
various parts of the island. Watching ever so 
eagerly, I failed to see any blackpoUs, Wilson 
blackcaps, bay - breasted, mourning, or yellow 
redpoll warblers, and it seemed strange to miss 
entirely the oven-birds, chestnut-sided, pine- 
creeping, and parula warblers, so readily found 
near Chocorua. These species may be known 
to Cape Breton, but they could hardly have es- 
caped my notice had they been abundant. 

Years ago, when houses and barns were less 
often or less thoroughly painted than they are 
now, and when overhanging eaves were common, 
the eaves swallow was a familiar bird in New 
England. Now the youthful nest-robber thinks 
of the mud-nest builder as a rare bird, one for 
whose eggs he is willing to travel many a mile. 
In all the Cape Breton country, where barn 
swallows abound, I saw but one colonj^ of eaves 
swallows, and that was in a place so dirty and 
dreary I regret that these charming birds must 
always recall it to my mind. Scottsville — may 
the spirit of cleanliness some day come with sapo- 
lio and Paris green to cleanse it ! — lies at the 
head waters of Southwest Margaree, within sight 
of the point wliere that restless river leaves Loch 
Ainslie. Opposite the village store stands an 
unpainted building with ample eaves, and on 
its northern side, crowded into a space about 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 93 

tliirty feet long, were one hundred of the retort- 
shaped mud-nests of the eaves swallows. They 
were placed one above another, frequently three 
deep. Their bottle - mouths were pointed up- 
wards, downwards, to left, or right, or towards 
the observer, as the overcrowding of the tene- 
ments made most convenient. While some of 
the older nests were symmetrical, others were 
of strange shapes, dictated by the form of the 
building-site left to them. 

Bank swallows were abundant, almost every 
available cutting being riddled with their holes. 
Near Baddeck I found one hole in a bank over- 
hanging the waves at Bras d'Or, at a point where 
every passing wagon must have made thunder in 
the ears of the tiny occupants of the nest, which 
was literally under the highway. I was attracted 
to this nest by seeing a bird enter it. The Bay 
of Fundy pours its terrible tides into the Basin 
of Minas, and the Blomidon region presents to 
the turbulent waters which rush into the basin, 
not only vast expanses of red mud which are left 
bare at low water, but also cliffs of rock or red clay 
which resist the surging waves at high tide. In 
the earth cliffs, which stand as straight as brick 
walls above the floods, the bank swallows find 
houses just to their liking, and from the cliffs of 
Pereaux to the waving grass of Grand Pre the 
little fleets of these birds flit back and forth hour 



94 FjRom bja)midon to smoky. 

by hour in the warm sunlight, or veer and tack 
chise to the waves when chilly fogs come in from 
Fundy. 

Of the chimney swift I saw little. He was in 
Cape Breton, but not in large numbers, and one 
or two farmers and fishermen said that he was a 
bird that built in hollow trees, and seemed not 
to know that in these times the chimney is sup- 
posed to be his chosen home. Night-hawks were 
abimdant, especially in the streets of Baddeck, 
where, in the twilight, which no lamp-post rises 
to injure, these swift and silent fliers darted in 
and out among* the heads of the passers by, to the 
bewilderment of those quick enough to see them. 
Probabh% if I had visited Cape Breton in June 
or early July, I should have heard the whippoor- 
will ; for when I whistled his song, the dwellers 
by sea or inland lake said, '* Oh yes, we have 
that bird. He sino-s at niii'ht." To me, however, 
he said nothing, nor did the humming-bird con- 
descend to make its small self knoA\ai farther 
north than the Basin of INIinas, which is a hun- 
dred miles or more from Cape Breton. Still, 
when I asked those who had gardens full of gayly 
tinted flowers if they knew the Imnuning-bird, 
they always replied, ••' Yes, the one with the beau- 
tiful red throat ; ** which made me wonder why 
they never saw the female ruby-throat with her 
more modest coloring of green and white. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 95 

Wlien I said that the junco was the distinctive 
bird of Cape Breton, I had in mind one rival 
chiiniant who certainly pervades the island with 
his presence. I well remember descending, jnst 
at snnset, into the exquisite glen of Loch o' Law, 
the most satisfying- piece of inland scenery which 
I saw in all Cape Breton. As the road bent 
around the wooded border of the lake, seven 
large blue birds rose from one end of the lake, 
and flew, in a straggling flock, down to a spot 
remote from the road. They looked like king- 
fishers, but I thought I had learned from experi- 
ence that, around small mountain lakes, king- 
fishers hunt singly in August. Nevertheless 
they were kingfishers, and they were hunting in 
a flock. A few hours before, at Middle River, 
where trout lie in shallow sunlit water over a 
yellow sandy bottom, I had seen a kingfisher 
hover above a point in the stream for several 
minutes. A rival flew down upon him and drove 
him away ; but before my horse could walk 
across the iron bridge above the river he was 
back again, hovering, kingbird-like, over the 
same spot. At Baddeck, the kingfishers perched 
upon the telegraph wires, or assumed statuesque 
poses upon the tips of slender masts of pleasure 
boats at anchor. There appeared to be no point 
on the Bras d'Or or the fresh-water lakes and 
rivers of the island where kingfishers were not 



96 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

twenty or thirty times as abundant as they are 
in northern New England. 

The osprey was also common on good fishing- 
grounds, and scarcely a day passed without my 
seeing both ospreys and eagles. One afternoon, 
shortly before sunset, I saw an osprey rise from 
the Bras d'Or with a good-sized fish in his claws. 
I expected to see him take it to some point near 
by, but instead he flew westward, high above the 
trees, until finally he was lost in distance. 

I have already mentioned seeing marsh hawks. 
None of the big buteos came near enough for me 
to identify them, nor did I see a Cooper's hawk, 
but, to my delight, sparrow hawks were not un- 
common, and were comparatively fearless. The 
first that we saw were in a large field near Middle 
River. As we drove slowly along the road, a pair 
of sparrow hawks frolicked in front of us. They 
rose as we came near enough to see distinctly all 
their handsome markings, and flew airily from 
one perch on the fence to another a rod or two 
farther on. They rose and fell, tilted, careened, 
righted, tacked, made exquisite curves, and in 
fact performed as many graceful manoeuvres in 
the air as a fine skater could on the ice, and 
then came back to the fence and perched again. 
I drove slowly in order not to frighten them, 
and the result was that they rose and settled 
again before us more than a dozen times. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 97 

Although I saw no living owls during my 
trip, I saw stuffed birds representing the com- 
mon species, and heard stories of the daring at- 
tacks of great horned owls upon the dwellers in 
the poultry yard, — geese, even, included. With 
snowy owls, the natives to whom I spoke seemed 
to be wholly unacquainted. 

Crows and blue jays were common in all sec- 
tions of Cape Breton, but the crow grew less in- 
teresting after I had met his big cousin the raven, 
just as the blue jay had sunk to even lower 
depths in my estimation after my introduction 
to the moose bird. The blue jay is a downright 
villain, and his rascality is emphasized by the 
Canada jay's virtues. The common crow is 
shrewd, but he lacks dignity. The first glimpse 
I had of a raven was from the top of Cape Smoky, 
where, from a crag more than a thousand feet 
above the waves which dashed against the rocks 
below, I saw three large black birds come round 
a headland and sail upon broadly spread wings 
to the face of a ledge upon which they alighted. 
The eye often detects differences in outline, 
movement, and carriage which the mind does 
not analyze or the tongue describe. The three 
black birds looked like crows ; in fact, the 
Ingonish fisherman will deny all knowledge of 
the American raven, and insist that there is 
no specific difference between what he calls 



98 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

a "big crow" and any other crow. Never- 
theless, something in the shape, bearing, and 
method of flight of the three visitors to Smoky 
fixed my attention several moments before a 
hoarse croak from the throat of one of them 
came echoing up the ravine and proclaimed their 
true character. At Ingonish they were abun- 
dant, especially near the cliffs of Middle Head, 
where I should expect to find them breeding 
if I made search at the proper season. Both 
ravens and crows were remarkably tame, and 
when I found that very little Indian corn is 
grown in Cape Breton, and that the people 
seemed ignorant of the crow's affection for 
sprouting corn, I felt that I had discovered one 
reason for their tameness. It was not unusual 
for a flock of ten or more crows to sit quietly 
upon the top rail of a snake fence bounding a 
highway, until a person walking or driving past 
came nearly opposite to them. If they were in 
a tree twelve or fifteen feet above the road, they 
did not think of flying away. Six ravens in a 
pine-tree on Middle Head remained quiet while 
I clambered over a mass of rocks less than a 
hundred feet from them. 

In Nova Scotia I saw kingbirds everywhere, 
four or five sometimes being in sight from the 
car window at once. I felt as though in the 
orchard and hay country of the Annapolis Basin 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAFE BRETON. 99 

the kingbirds must have discovered their chosen 
home. In Cape Breton, while not so abundant, 
they were by no means rare. On the other 
hand, pewees and small flycatchers were few and 
far between, and great-crested flycatchers, which 
are common at Chocorua, were not to be seen. 
Olive-sided flycatchers were present in .various 
parts of Cape Breton in favorable localities ; and 
when I heard their loud, unmusical call, coming 
from the tip of some leafless, fire-bleached pine, 
it always took me back to my first meeting with 
the bird high up on the desolate ridges between 
Chocorua and Paugus, where from the pinnacles 
of dead trees they scanned the air for insects, 
and wearied nature by intermittent cries. 

Red-eyed vireos were not so numerous in Cape 
Breton as they are in New Hampshire, but there 
were enough of them to keep up a running fire 
of conversation from one end of the island to 
the other. I saw solitary vireos in several local- 
ities, one of which was a wooded pasture in In- 
gonish, near a small sheet of fresh water, and a 
hill in which the outcropping rock was gypsum. 
Within an hour I recognized over thirty kinds 
of birds in this pasture, including, among those 
not already mentioned in these pages, a white- 
winged crossbill, a chipping sparrow, and several 
goldfinches. This white-winged crossbill was 
the only one that I saw during my trip, but red 



100 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

crossbills were to be met with in small numbers 
all through the region between Baddeck and In- 
gonish. The first that I saw appeared in the air 
over Baddeck River, just as I was driving a 
horse across the iron bridge which spans the river 
on the road to the Margaree. The wind was 
blowing so hard that I felt some concern lest my 
buggy should be tipped over ; but the crossbills, 
with their usual appearance of having lost either 
their wits, their way, or their mother, perched 
upon the iron braces of the bridge directly over 
our heads, and looked this way and that dis- 
tractedly, with their feathers all blown wrong 
side out. An hour or two later, when approach- 
ing Middle River, I noticed a flock of blackbirds 
in a small grove by the roadside. I got out and 
entered the grove. Every bird in the flock of 
sixteen seemed to be reciting blackbird poetry, 
and that, too, in the sweetest voice which rusty 
grackles are ca]3able of making heard. Although, 
on many other occasions, I saw representatives 
of this species in various parts of Cape Breton, 
I was unable to find any of its near kindred. 
No purple grackles, redwings, cowbirds, bobo- 
links, starlings, or orioles crossed my path ; yet 
I saw much territory in which they might, for 
all I could see, have been very happy, and in 
which song, swamp, and savanna sparrows, Mary- 
land yellow-throats, and similar birds appeared 
to be established. 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 101 

Cape Breton is unquestionably a favorite 
resort of woodpeckers, including the flicker, 
hairy, downy, yellow-breasted, and black-backed, 
and I doubt not the pileated also, although I 
was not fortunate enough to see or hear him. 
Flickers were common, and consorted much with 
robins, as they do in New Hampshire during 
their autumn migration. The hairy woodpeck- 
ers were most abundant near highways, where 
they frequented the telegraph poles and snake 
fences. As I write, I cannot recall seeing a 
hairy woodpecker anywhere except upon the 
poles and fences close to roads, but I saw many 
in those favored places. They were noticeably 
tame, as most of the Cape Breton birds were, 
and allowed me to drive close to them, while 
they tapped gayly upon the bleached poles, or 
scrambled over, through, and under the fence 
sticks. Downy woodpeckers were less conspicu- 
ous, and of the yellow-breasted I saw only one. 
He was a young male that had been tapping 
alder trunks in a thicket growing upon very 
damp ground, on the edge of the Southwest Mar- 
garee, near the point where it escapes from the 
broad waters of Loch Ainslie. Nearly a dozen 
trees had been bled by him or his family. As 
soon as I entered the thicket he flew away ; and 
although I awaited his return as long as time 
permitted, neither he nor any other woodpecker 



102 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

or humming-bird came to the sap fountains. 
One of the birds which I most wished to see in 
the northern woods was the black-backed, three- 
toed woodpecker. I searched for him near Bad- 
deck, at Loch Ainslie, and on my journey north- 
ward from Baddeck to Ingonish, but he did not 
appear. One morning, during my journey south- 
ward from Cape Smoky, I arose very early and 
visited the beautiful falls and canon of Indian 
Brook, which are about twxnty-five miles north 
of Baddeck. In the deep woods near the falls I 
met three of these sprightly birds. I had con- 
cealed myself among the bushes to call birds 
around me, and was watching Hudson's Bay tit- 
mice, common chickadees, flickers, wary wood- 
wise robins, juncos, and a few shy warblers, 
when a woodpecker cry, manifestly not made by 
a flicker, rang through the woods. High up on 
a blasted tree was a medium-sized woodpecker, 
somewhat resembling a sapsucker in attitude 
and air of being up and a-coming. I squeaked 
more vigorously, and he came nearer. Then a 
second and a third arrived, and all of them ap- 
proached me with boldness born of curiosity and 
inexperience. They scolded and hitched up and 
down tree trunks, flew nervously from one side 
of me to the other, tapped protests on the 
sounding bark, and behaved in general like true 
woodpeckers. Differences in birds are what we 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 103 

think of most in studying them ; but after all, 
their points of similarity, especially when these 
points hint strongly at the identity of the origin 
of species, are quite as instructive, and worthy 
of serious thought. 

Leaving the three-toed inquisitors, I walked 
on through the woods skirting Indian Brook, 
and within quarter of a mile flushed a woodcock 
and several ruffed grouse. Of the latter I saw 
a dozen or more during my rambles near Bad- 
deck and Ingonish, but of spruce partridges I 
failed to secure even a glimpse, although all the 
local sportsmen declared them to be abundant, 
and as tame as barnyard fowls. At the point 
where the highway between Englishtown and 
Cape Smoky crosses Indian Brook there is a 
long and very deep pool. As I emerged from 
the woods above this pool, I saw three red- 
breasted mergansers swimming slowly across it, 
A prettier spot for them to have chosen for their 
morning fishing could not have been found on 
the Cape Breton coast. High ledges overhang- 
ing dark water, and overhung in turn by spruce 
and fir forest, formed a beautiful setting for the 
still pool across which they swam in single file, 
with their keen eyes watching me suspiciously. 
Many are the young salmon and speckled trout 
they cut with their ragged jaws. 

Had my visit to northern Cape Breton fallen 



104 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

during the period of the autumn migration, I 
should have seen wonderful flights and fleets of 
sea fowl. As it was, the species which I saw 
and the individuals which I met were few, save 
in the case of Wilson's tern, which was ubiqui- 
tous, and the least sandpiper, which in numer- 
ous flocks swarmed upon the sands. I saw also 
solitary and semipalmated sandpipers, greater 
yellow -legs, herring gulls, dusky ducks, old 
squaws, and golden-eyes. Blue herons were 
plentiful near Baddeck, as they had been on the 
Annapolis Basin. They formed a striking part 
of every evening picture, where sparkling water, 
tinted sky, purple hills, and gathering shadows 
were united under the magic words " Bras d'Or." 
In Loch o' Law, as the sun sank over the Mar- 
garee, a mother loon swam and dived with her 
chick in the placid water ; but the bird which 
impressed itself most strongly upon my memory, 
during my trip, was the lonely shag, or cormo- 
rant, which I saw on the outer end of a line of 
rocks projecting into Ingonish Bay from the 
side of Middle Head. Dark and slimy, melan- 
choly and repulsive, its head and neck reminded 
me of a snake or turtle more than of any gen- 
uine feather-wearer. When at last it saw me, it 
was to the bay that it turned for escape, and 
upon the waters, almost out of sight, that it set- 
tled down to rest among the waves. There is 



AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 105 

more community of interest between this crea- 
tm'e and the fish which swim under the waves 
than with the swallow which flies above them. 

All told, I think that I saw eighty species of 
birds during my two weeks' wandering in Cape 
Breton. Had I taken my tame owl Puffy with 
me, I should doubtless have seen more, for he 
would have drawn many shy birds round him 
which found no difficulty in secluding themselves 
from me. The island is certainly remarkably 
good ground for bird study ; species are many, 
and individuals numerous. The combination of 
ocean, bay, inland lake both salt and fresh, for- 
est, and mountain is one which favors diversity 
and stimulates abundance. 



BAEBED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 

Chocoeua is one of the boldest, most pictur- 
esque, and at the same time one of the most south- 
erly of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 
At its southern foot are several small lakes fed by 
its streams. The chief of these streams is called 
Chocorua River, and its main lake Chocorua 
Lake. North of this water, fringing the river 
for half a mile, is a growth of yellow birch, 
beech, and hemlock of considerable age and 
size. The dainty parula is frequently seen in 
its gray moss. Cooper's hawks, red-shouldered 
hawks, and yellow-breasted woodpeckers are com- 
mon tenants of its shades. On June 1, 1888, 
while nest-hunting in its midst, 1 saw a barred 
owl sitting on the edge of a cavity in a beech. 
The tree was a giant. The cavity was about 
thirty-five feet from the ground, on the south- 
westerly side, and quite large. The owl did 
not move, even after I threw a stick at her. 
Convinced that the cavity was worth exploring, 
I went home and returned with a friend, a lad- 
der, and a gun. As a result two old birds were 
shot, and two young ones taken from the nest. 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 107 

The gun was quite necessary, for my friend 
would have fared badly in climbing if I had 
not shot the old birds before they could attack 
him. Their threatening cries and the loud snap- 
ping of their beaks were quite enough to discour- 
age an unarmed robber. 

I wrapped the two young birds in a towel and 
later placed them side by side in an ordinary 
canary cage. They were savage, using beaks 
and claws vigorously. When released in my 
dooryard they half hopped, half flew towards the 
nearest tree, making such rapid progress that I 
did not risk their loss by a second experiment. 
For their permanent prison I chose a case in 
which a piano had been boxed. By standing 
it upon its end, and nailing perches at differ- 
ent heights, ample space was given the captives. 
The front of the box was barred horizontally by 
laths. 

On what could the owls be fed? That was 
my first problem. Not sharing in the belief of 
my family that everything in feathers eats dough, 
I tried raw beef. The birds found it too tough 
to manage readily, and raw liver was substituted. 
Nothing could have suited them better, and for 
the best part of eighteen months liver and 
beef kidney have been the chief of their diet. 
For the birds' names the feminine half of my 
household agreed upon " Puffy " and " Fluffy.'' 



108 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

At first the names were not of much, use, for no 
one could tell one bird from the other, but it 
was not long before an event occurred which not 
only caused them to be readily distinguished, 
but led to a lifelong differentiation of their char- 
acters and careers. Puffy, or he who was thence- 
forth to be Puffy, caught his left wing between 
two of the laths, and by his struggles injured it so 
that it lost most of its usefulness as a wing and 
became rather an obstruction to his free locomo- 
tion. This happened about the middle of June, 
after my return to Cambridge, and I did not see 
the owls again until the second week in July, when 
my long vacation at Chocorua began. I found 
the birds fifty per cent larger than when I first 
handled them, and with tempers similarly devel- 
oped. No one's fingers were safe inside the bars 
when the young gluttons were hungry. When 
satiated they were stolid, and did little beyond 
moving their heads and snapping their beaks. 
One interesting fact had been developed during 
my absence, — the owls not only drank water 
freely, but took prolonged baths whenever fresh 
water was given them. Their tank was a foot 
and a half long, a foot wide, and ten inches deep. 
Their reflections in this comparatively deep and 
dark pool greatly amused them for a time. On 
the arrival of fresh water Fluffy was usually the 
first at the brink, ready to drink several times, 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 109 

and then to step cautiously in. He would test 
the depth before ducking his head, and then, 
holding out his wings, he would pump the water 
under them, flapping his tail and otherwise 
drenching himself. When thus soaked he be- 
came about the size of a plucked pigeon, the 
color of a crow, and a dismal object to look 
upon. His eyes at such times would stand out 
from his drenched and drizzling feathers in a 
most unpleasant way. This habit of bathing 
has been maintained in all weathers and temper- 
atures. I have seen both birds take their plunges 
on mornings when the mercury outdoors was 
not more than 10° F. On such occasions they 
shiver for hours before drying. After washing, 
it is their habit to preen each feather in their 
wings and tails with great care and precision. 

During the summer and autumn of 1888, and 
at intervals since, I have tried various experi- 
ments in feeding the owls. They reject all 
vegetable substances with the possible exception 
of cooked oatmeal, although they will sometimes 
play with apples, grape leaves, fresh twigs, corn- 
silk and husks, tearing them up solely for amuse- 
ment apparently, and flinging fragments in all 
directions. Mice they consider a rare treat, and 
they swallow them without hesitation, head fore- 
most. With birds they are equally pleased, but 
if one is larger than a redstart they are quite 



110 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

sure to crusli the skull, sometimes eating the 
head separately, then to pull out the stiff feathers, 
and after feeling of the wing joints, to swallow 
head foremost. A hermit thrush thus prepared 
is about the limit of their single swallowing 
power. They sometimes, especially with larger 
birds, devour the contents of the abdominal 
cavity before swallowing the trunk. When an 
appetizing mouthful has been started on its down- 
ward journey the expression of gluttonous enjoy- 
ment thrown into their half-closed eyes and dis- 
tended mouths is something beyond words. One 
seems to see them taste the morsel all the way 
down ! If a mouthful sticks at first, they jerk 
their bodies up and down with considerable force, 
literally ramming it in by concussion. Some- 
times the tail of a warbler thus being lost to 
siofht remains in one corner of the owl's mouth. 
The owl's practice then is to turn his head 
towards it far enough to twist the unwilling 
feathers into the middle of his tongue, and then 
to swallow violently, always with effect. 

With great interest in the result, I placed nine 
live perch and bream in the owl's tank one morn- 
ing when they were about three months old. 
They had never seen fish before. As the light 
played upon the red fins and bright scales, the 
birds' excitement was amusing to see. In a 
very short time, however, they plunged feet fore- 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. Ill 

most into the water, and with almost unerring 
aim lanced the victims with, their talons and flew 
out with them. Then the head was crushed at 
its junction with the backbone, the spines were 
bitten into jelly, and the fish was swallowed. I 
have seen half a dozen small hornpout caught, 
disarmed, and swallowed by them in a compara- 
tively short time. Generally all the fish in the 
tank were caught and killed before any were 
eaten. Live frogs called for more agility than 
live fish. When placed on the bottom of the 
cage or in the water tank, the frogs seemed 
to realize their danger, and as a rule remained 
motionless. The owls would hang their great 
heads towards them, and eye them intently. 
The faintest sign of life would lead to a pounce 
or a desperate chase round the cage. When 
caught, the frog was subjected to a careful over- 
hauling. Every joint was felt and crushed. As 
they slid the slippery legs through their beaks 
they seemed to be searching for spurs or horns 
which might prevent easy swallowing. Once 
found spurless, the frog soon vanished. The 
wood frog seems to be their favorite species, and 
the leopard frog the least well flavored. Once 
Puffy caught a toad in the grass, but the crea- 
ture apparently tasted so unpleasant that it was 
quickly dropped, while for several minutes the 
owl hopped about shaking his head and making 



112 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

motions with Ms mouth expressive of disgust or 
even pain. A small salamander was eaten with- 
out hesitation. 

Once, when unusually hungry, the owls de- 
voured more than a pint of large, fat earth- 
worms, taking them from my fingers, or picking 
them up singly with their claws with wonderful 
dexterity. A plump slug was taken readily by 
Puffy, but almost instantly flung from his mouth 
with disgust. Fresh water mussels, abundant in 
Chocorua Lake, were taken with some hesitation 
and, I fancied, made Puffy miserable. 

Flies, harvest flies, dragon flies, grasshoppers, 
and beetles of various kinds all proved enjoy- 
able tidbits, but of snakes and turtles the owls 
stood in terror during the summer of 1888. The 
appearance of either led the birds to make des- 
perate efforts to escape between the upper slats 
of their cage. What was my surprise then, in 
the summer of 1889, to find that so far as snakes 
were concerned, timidity was changed to curi- 
osity, and curiosity quickly transformed into an 
eager desire to catch, kill, and swallow. Even 
a dead milk snake, three feet long and fat, was 
eaten piecemeal until only the well-picked skele- 
ton remained. This was done in August, 1889. 
Small green snakes were seized by their middle 
and swallowed doubled, while still writhing. 

Generally fresh meat is greatly preferred to 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 113 

that whicli is stale. I have seen both owls re- 
tire in disgust to the top of their cage when 
some thoroughly offensive liver was offered them. 
On the other hand they devoured the skinned 
carcass of a broad-winged hawk when it was 
in almost as advanced a stage of decay, and 
once recently, when I placed a piece of luminous 
kidney in their closet at night, Puffy instantly 
pounced upon it. I have no doubt from other 
experiments that the light of the decaying meat, 
and not its smell, was what attracted him. 

On one occasion I found a large number of 
mice in a barrel of excelsior. Carefully taking 
out most of the packing, I placed Puffy in the 
bottom of the barrel. The mice spun round him 
in confusing circles, but with great coolness he 
caught one after another until nineteen were dis- 
posed of. The owls between them ate the entire 
number within six hours. Pnffy is also expert 
in catching and killing chipmunks, when placed 
with them in a barrel. After seeing one or two 
let out of a box trap for his benefit, the sight of 
the trap was enough to bring him to the door of 
the cage ready to act as executioner. The junc- 
tion of the head and body of a vertebrate is the 
point always chosen for the first effective use 
of the beak. The struggles of a dying victim 
seem to cause a certain cat-like excitement and 
pleasure. 



114 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

During the warm months the owls require 
food daily, and in considerable quantities. As 
cold weather comes on, their demands grow more 
moderate, and in midwinter they eat little and 
seem drowsy most of the time. Once or twice 
I have failed to feed them for nearly a week 
after giving them a hearty ration. In summer, 
when fed frequently, and on mixed animal food, 
they often eject from their throats round pellets 
made up of the bones, hair, feathers, or other 
undigested portions of their preceding meal. 
Once or twice these ejections have been ex- 
tremely offensive in odor. When hungry the 
owls betray the fact by whining cries. When 
fed, if both secure a hold on the first piece of 
liver, a spirited tug of war ensues, wings, beak, 
free foot, and tail all being used to gain ground. 
During such a scrimmage a queer chattering 
with an undertone of angry whining is kept up, 
but I never have seen either bird attempt to 
wound or really injure the other. Food not re- 
quired by one of the owls for immediate use is 
always hidden in a corner, and often guarded 
with care against appropriation by the other. 

Contrary to my expectations the owls are not 
appreciably more active in twilight hours than 
at other times, and I think they are quiet, possi- 
bly asleep, at night. I am certain that in an 
ordinary degree of darkness they cannot see. If 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 115 

the liglit goes out while Fluffy is flying in my 
cellar in the evening, he is sure to crash into 
something or fall heavily to the ground. I have 
held Paffy close to a cat in the dark, and he was 
wholly unaware of her presence. Neither of 
them has ever shown a dislike for sunlight, and, 
as will be seen hereafter, they can see without 
difficulty in the face of the brightest natural 
light. While watching anything which inter- 
ests them they have a most characteristic habit 
of throwing their heads far forward and then 
swinging them about like signal lanterns, or 
waving them back and forth and up and down, 
as if seeking the clearest avenue of vision to 
the object of interest. This trick is probably 
due to their ancestors' peering through thick 
branches in search of prey. 

About the third week in September, 1888, the 
owls were sent by freight from Chocorua to 
Cambridge. The journey failed to disturb them, 
and they took kindly to city life in a sunny cor- 
ner of my cellar. Their near neighbors were 
my hens, who resented deeply my early experi- 
ments in letting the owls out in their narrow do- 
minion. The hens fought them bravely when 
brought to close quarters. My first test with 
the owls at liberty proved that they neither 
feared me nor desired to attack me. They rec- 
ognized me as their caterer, and hailed my ap- 



116 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

proach with noisy demands for food. I began 
handling them with heavy gloves which their 
beaks and talons made little impression upon. 
Gradually I came to use my bare hands, and 
with Puffy especially I was soon on familiar 
terms. The way in which I accustomed him to 
handling was by first rubbing the top of his 
head with one finger, and then softly rubbing 
the back of his head and neck with my finger 
tips. During the process he seemed almost mes- 
merized, although occasionally he would recover 
himself and make a swift snap at my retreating 
fingers. In the course of a few weeks I gained 
sufficient influence over both birds to carry them 
about with great freedom, always beginning by 
pushing their heads down, and then clasping 
them round their bodies just below the wings. 
If turned on their backs while thus held, they 
remain entirely quiet. 

During the greater part of the long winter I 
keep them in a closet in my main cellar. I found 
to my cost that I could not keep them in the 
sunny cellar where my hens were, for the reason 
that they caught and ate some of my pullets and 
terrified the survivors so that their lives were a 
burden. Their only delicacies in these months 
are mice. Their attitudes in chasing a dead 
mouse dragged over the cellar by a string are 
striking. Fluffy sails noiselessly over the ground 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. Ill 

with feet pointed forward and claws ready to 
close ; but Puffy, unable to fly, stalks across the 
floor, his head pushed forward, and his feathers 
drawn away from his legs. 

As the spring of 1889 came on, the owls be- 
came tuneful after their kind. The quality of 
their sounds suggested feline music, while their 
accent and metre often aroused my roosters to 
responsive crowing. They seldom hooted more 
than once or twice, and then in the early evening. 

With the coming of warm weather and the 
return of birds in the spring of 1889, I began a 
series of experiments with Puffy which proved 
of considerable interest. I had found that he 
was willing to be carried about while perching 
on a short stick. Taking him in a basket to some 
woods in the suburbs of Cambridge, I displayed 
him to the robins, pigeon woodpeckers, vireos 
and warblers which chanced to be at hand. 
No impressario ever was more delighted at the 
success of a new star. A full house gathered at 
once. Armed with a field glass I had the satis- 
faction of studying at short range the whole bird 
population of the neighborhood. The robins, 
brown thrushes, and pigeon woodpeckers were 
the noisiest, the oven-birds and red-eyed vireos 
the most persistent, the chickadees the most in- 
dignant. The woodpeckers went so far as to fly 
past the owl so close as to brush his feathers 



118 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

and make him jump at each charge. On May 12, 
during a three hours' walk, I saw over forty 
species of birds, many of which I had unusual 
and ample time to study through my glass, thanks 
to their interest in the owl and consequent indif- 
ference to me. It was not, however, until my 
long vacation in Chocorua, beginning July 6, 
that I really had time to ascertain the full value 
as a magnet of my patient little bird companion. 
The owls made the journey back to the moun- 
tains with perfect composure. On being returned 
to their piano-box cage they promptly sought 
their respective corners, and showed in many 
ways their recognition of old surroundings. This 
power of memory was even more strongly shown 
on their arrival in Cambridge in October, 1889, 
when Fluffy flew across the cellar in search of 
a favorite perch which had been removed, and the 
absence of which caused him to end his flight in 
an ignominious tumble. 

On my arrival at Chocorua I began to keep 
systematic account of all birds seen each day, 
making careful allowance for birds seen twice in 
the same day. Between eTuly 6, and Oct. 14, I 
recognized 9782 birds, representing 95 species. 
On nearly half the days in this period Puffy was 
my companion on my walks and rides. At first 
it was not easy to induce him to leave his cage 
and accompany me, but after a few lessons he 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 119 

consented to step from his perch upon the short 
pme stick on which I used to carr}^ him, and to 
remain clinging to it while I walked or ran, 
scrambled over ledges, or forced my way through 
thickets and brambles. He went more than once 
to the heights of Chocorua ; passed hours trav- 
eling through dark woods and high pastures ; or 
perched resignedly on the sharp prow of my Rush- 
ton boat, watching dragon-flies skimming the 
surface of the lake, and his own image reflected 
in the water. In the woods, if I held him too 
near a tempting log or projecting branch, he 
would hop off. Sometimes he would weary of 
my walldng, and, jumping to the groimd, would 
scurry away to cover and snap his beak angrily 
if I poked his perch in towards him and told him 
to " o'et on.*' As the summer wore on he ^rew 
more and more obedient and less inclined to nip 
my fingers on the sly as he had a way of doing 
when I first carried him about. This winter I 
have trained Fluffy to step up beside his mate and 
submit to being carried around the house on a 
perch. 

Whenever on my summer walks I came to 
a spot which I wished to *' sample " for its birds, I 
would place Puffy on a bending sapling, and, 
hiding in the neighboring foliage, I would 
" squeak " by drawing in my breath over the back 
of my hand, to attract the attention of any bri'ds 



120 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY, 

wliicli were near by. Usually in the deep woods 
the first comer was a red-eyed vireo, chickadee, 
hermit thrush, or oven-bird ; but whichever it 
chanced to be, an alarm was almost sure to be 
given that would bring birds from all directions 
eager to see the cause of disturbance. Even when 
I was imperfectly concealed, the irritated crowd 
paid little attention to me, provided I kept rea- 
sonably quiet. Sometimes I would leave the owl 
in comparatively open ground on a boulder in a 
pasture, or a stump in a meadow. Then his fa- 
vorite position was with his head tipped directly 
backward and his eyes, half closed, fixed either 
on the sun or a spot not ten degrees from it. I 
never could fully understand this attitude, but I 
soon found that the owl was keenly alive to any- 
thing passing skyward, for if a hawk or crow 
came into view far away in the deep blue, Puffy's 
gaze was instantly turned full upon the growing 
speck, the eyelids partly closed and a most intent 
look coming into his eyes. Again and again 
Puffy has seen hawks or gulls overhead which 
my eyes, although unusually far-sighted, have at 
first been unable to discern. On one eventful 
day he showed me 334 hawks sailing southwest 
under the pressure of a stiff northeast gale. It 
was September 10, one of the later of the days 
when the fires were raging among the forests 
along the St. John River. The hawks were 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY 121 

most of them flying very liigli. I saw none be- 
fore 9 A. M. or after 2.15 p. M. I think Puffy 
saw every one of them. It mattered not whether 
they came singly or in bunches of twenty to forty, 
his ever ready eye was upon them as soon as they 
came into view. In si3ite of this marvelous 
power of detecting moving objects in a bright 
light, my j)ets often utterly ignore some dainty 
morsel merely because it does not move. Their 
sense of smell is either weak or uncertain in its 
action. Their hearing on the other hand is acute, 
although not depended upon in the same degree 
as their sight. 

Of the various families of birds which Puffy 
annoyed during the summer of 1889, none 
were more distressed and angered by his pres- 
ence than the woodj)eckers, thrushes, and vireos. 
In every hemlock swamp the yellow-breasted 
woodpeckers and flickers said their say against 
his character with petulant emphasis. The 
flickers often flew close to his head. Downies 
and hairies liked him no better, but were less 
demonstrative. It was when a venerable and 
fiery-tempered logcock caught sight of him on 
August 21, that the full force of woodpecker 
eloquence was let out. Puffy seemed to recog- 
nize a hereditary foe, for before the pileated 
came into my view, the owl suddenly changed 
his appearance from rough-feathered and sleepy 



122 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. \ 

content to an astonishing resemblance to an old 
moss-grown stump. He effected the transforma- 
tion by standing up very straight, nearly closing 
his eyes, and making his feathers lie absolutely 
sleek against his attenuated body. Once on 
another occasion when he ran away from me, he 
climbed to the top of a small oak stump and 
made himself look so like a continuation of it 
that I passed him four times without detecting 
his presence. Not so the pileated, for with a 
shrieking cackle, his crest gleaming in the sun- 
light, he flew at the owl so savagely that I ex- 
pected to see my pet slain on the spot. He only 
ruffled Puffy's feathers, however, and made the 
poor bird unhappy for some time by his dis- 
cordant cries and frequent flights and counter 
flights. 

Of the thrushes, the robins took the owl 
most to heart. More than once in black cherry 
time I have seen sixty to a hundred of them 
within twenty-five feet of him. Their blended 
cries always drew hermits and Swainson's from 
the woods, cedarbirds from their cherry feasts, 
and detachments of warblers from woods and 
meadows. The veeries seemed to care least 
about their enemy ; the hermits said little, but 
did some hard thinking. The Swainson's, es- 
pecially after sunset, had a good deal to say in 
a refined way, flirting wings and tail meanwhile. 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY, 123 

The numerous catbirds and occasional thrash- 
ers were coarsely abusive. Through it all Puffy 
made no remarks, and seldom stirred ; he found 
out long ago that he could not catch birds. 

The ubiquitous red-eyed vireo never wearied 
of staring at Puffy, and firing at him his sus- 
picious, expostulating " cree ! " By roadside 
and meadow, upland pasture, and in the deeps 
of the beeches, the red-eye was always present. 
Even in the haunts of the j uncos and white- 
throated sparrows on the high ledges of Cho- 
corua he was not absent. My count of birds in 
July showed him to be inferior in numbers only 
to the barn swallow, the cedar-bird, and the 
robin. Far less numerous, but a leader among 
the haters of the owl, was the blue-headed 
vireo. I had seen little of the bird in previous 
seasons, but Puffy seemed to draw one or more 
of them from every considerable area visited. 
Their scolding reminded me of an angry June- 
bug in a bottle. 

As a rule the sparrows cared little for the 
owl. Purple finches would come and look him 
over, the female making a sweet little note of 
inquisitive protest, and then go away. Gold- 
finches did about the same, showing no anger. 
Grass finches sat about on boulders and said 
little, and their friends, the field sparrows, be- 
haved similarly. In large swamps one or two 



124 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

rose-breasted grosbeaks generally came to see 
what caused so much outcry, but they never ap- 
proached close to the owl. During the flight of 
j uncos, white-throats, and white-crowned spar- 
rows in October, these species seemed to care 
almost nothing about Puffy after a first bustling 
visit of inquiry. 

A bird of great individuality and irregular 
distribution is found quite abundantly in the 
Chocorua country. I refer to the great-crested 
flycatcher, which, by the way, has always placed 
snake skins in those of its nests that I have 
found. No amount of bird clamor will bring 
this self-contained and suspicious citizen near my 
owl. He has his own affairs to care for, and he 
has a contempt for brawls and gossip. Similar 
indifference was shown the owl in a less marked 
way by the smaller flycatchers, but the kingbirds 
maintained their reputation for bullying by at- 
tacking Puffy and striking him lightly again 
and again by well-directed darts from above. 

The swallows and swifts delighted to tease the 
owl by dashing past him and fanning him with 
their wings. They showed no fear or hatred. 
Kingfishers took no notice of him. The black- 
billed cuckoo came near, and had a good deal 
to say in a reproachful voice, but its controlling 
emotion seemed to be curiosity rather than fear. 
Late one afternoon in August (the 2d), I placed 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 125 

Puffy in the midst of a white birch grove near a 
brook. A cuCkoo opened the opera and brought 
some vireos, including two solitaries. Their ex- 
plosions were audible a long way, and for a 
moment or two the air seemed full of birds, 
nearly all warblers, and all coming towards the 
owl. I could not count them ; they came by 
scores and swarmed about incessantly like bees. 
Most of them were black-and-white creepers, 
black - throated greens, chestnut - sideds, black- 
and- yellows, Canadians, and redstarts, young 
birds predominating. I never expect to see 
more warblers in one noisy bunch. As a rule, 
however, a glance or two seemed to satisfy them, 
and they went off after their suppers. Of all 
the warblers, the oven-birds were the only ones 
at all persistent in abusing Puffy. They would 
come quickly and stay long, with ruffled feathers 
and anxious notes. One day (July 14), while 
exploring some dense spruce thickets on a high 
ridge of Chocorua, I came across a pair of black- 
poll warblers. They were much excited by the 
owl and joined with juncos and white-throats 
in prolonged complaining at his presence. A 
white-winged crossbill, flying by at the moment, 
alighted and looked us over, but was apparently 
not at all interested in Puffy. 

Another bird which never showed any special 
emotion on seeing the owl, no matter what the 



126 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

season, was the scarlet tanager. As a rule it 
took no notice of the owl's presence. Cedar- 
birds were similarly indifferent even when the 
owl was near their nests or young. 

Crows and blue jays showed great hatred of 
the owl. In the late summer the jays prowled 
about in considerable flocks. By " squeaking " I 
could draw them near enough to see the owl, 
and then the harshest and most violent kind of 
bird abuse would be poured out on Puffy's head. 
Jays certainly have a broad knowledge of pro- 
fanity. The crows were scarcely less demon- 
strative ; circling low over the owl, they made 
the woods ring with their angry clamor. I 
found that I could attract them by hooting like 
my pets. 

As a rule the hawks cared little for the owl. 
I shot one young Cooper's hawk near its nest 
because my calling and the owl's moving about 
induced the creature to fly up, tree by tree, until 
within range. On July 23, while " squeaking," 
I was astonished to see a sharp-shinned hawk 
make a dash at Puffy, scaring him into his stump- 
like condition of plumage and attitude. I con- 
tinued to " squeak," and the hawk flew straight 
at my head, grazed my face, and alighted near 
by. Soon a second came, but was more wary. I 
amused myself with them for half an hour, and 
again on another day a week later. On no other 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 127 

occasion do I remember a hawk's taking any no- 
tice of Puffy, although in many instances he has 
betrayed their presence by his change of shape 
and expression. Once while walking with him 
along the shore of Chocorua Lake he changed 
his whole appearance in the twinkling of an 
eye, and as I turned to follow his gaze I saw 
an eagle strike the water near by, dashing the 
foam high into the air. 

About sunset on August 12, 1889, I heard a 
barred owl hooting near a small lake close to 
the foot of Chocorua. Two of us set out at 
once with guns and reached the crest of a kame 
near the lake just as the moon rose. After wait- 
ing quietly until weary, I began hooting, and to 
my surprise and delight an owl responded from 
a tree close by. I hooted again ; it came nearer. 
Then I " squeaked," and the next second I has- 
tened to hide my head in the bushes, for the 
wings of an owl had brushed my face in the 
darkness, making cold shivers run down my 
back. We fired three times at this owl and 
another which joined him, but failed to kill 
either. After amusing myself and others sev- 
eral evenings by calling the owls in this way, I 
took Puffy with me and placed him on a swing- 
ing bough where he was plainly visible to cre- 
puscular eyesight. Several Swainson's thrushes 
found him out before twilight faded, and com- 



128 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

plained softly at his presence. When all was 
still, I hooted, and soon an owl replied from 
the farther shore of the lake. Continuing^ to 
call, I had the satisfaction of seeing my bird fly 
close over Puffy's head and alight within easy 
range, another owl at the same time beginning 
to hoot close by. I shot one and was satisfied. 
Puffy and Fluffy always show great excitement 
when wild owls hoot at night, and occasionally 
Fluffy replies. 

The only other owl which I have seen thus 
far in the Chocorua region is the Acadian. On 
July 18, about six p. m., listening to four great- 
crested flycatchers signaling each other in a 
wooded pasture, I noted an unusual commotion 
among robins, hermits, and vireos in a bunch 
of alders not far away. Creeping in, with Puffy 
held before me, I saw the scolds surrounding a 
buff-waistcoated young Acadian perched about 
five feet from the ground on an alder. He saw 
Puffy, and Pnffy looked at him with interest and 
attention. The agony in the little bird's yellow 
eyes was pitiful. He gazed long, and then, turn- 
ing his head slowly away, sailed noiselessly out 
of sight, followed by the gossips. 

There are several of the Chocorua birds which 
I have not named in connection with the owl. 
The bluebirds seemed grieved to think anything 
so wicked could exist. They perched near him 



BARRED OWLS IN CAPTIVITY. 129 

and seemed to be trying with their sweet tones 
to induce him to give up being an owl. The 
kinglets cared nothing for him, even when their 
curiosity was aroused by the abuse of chickadees, 
who were among the noisiest of Puffy's visitors. 
Both nuthatches are common near Chocorua, 
and both showed by brief, business-like remarks 
what they thought of Puffy. Winter wrens 
told Puffy plainly that he was a thief. The 
indigo -bird was one of the few finches which 
seemed much disturbed by him. The towhee 
showed moderate excitement. The Icteridce 
(American starlings), are uncommon in the Cho- 
corua region, and none of them met Puffy in his 
native meadows. About Cambridge, however, 
orioles, redwings, crow blackbirds, and cow bunt- 
ino;s all showed marked excitement and angler at 
his presence. Night-hawks and whippoorwills 
have not met Puffy. I hope next summer to 
arrange an interview with a whippoorwill who 
haunts my pasture bars. Once or twice hum- 
ming-birds have buzzed a moment near Puffy's 
head, as if adding their small tribute of hatred 
to the general estimate of his character. 

None of the few species of game and water 
birds found near Chocorua Lakes have seemed to 
show any interest in the owls. 

I have recently taken Puffy to Chocorua in 
the season of snow. Of the eight species of birds 



130 FliOM BLOMIDOX TO SMOKY 

met, only four saw the owl. They were chicka- 
dees, red-breasted nuthatches, redpolls, and blue 
jays. They all scolded him, but not with the 
average sunuuer emphasis. The redpolls showed 
only mild curiosity which soon expended itself 
in gentle reproachful phrases. Puft'y did not 
mind cold, but the light from the snow seemed 
to blind him. Indoors he held two young hounds 
at bay, and made their lives miserable by refus- 
ing to allow them to come near his corner with- 
out risking an attack from his beak and claws. 
With dogs and cats outdoors he always shows 
fear unless they come to close quarters ; then, as 
indoors, he spreads and arches his wings, raises 
his feathers on his back, lowers his head, and 
snaps his beak, sometimes making swift rushes 
with an expression so fierce that 1 have yet to 
find any quadruped willing to defy him. 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 

Of the seven species of woodpeckers which I 
have found in the region of Mt. Chocorua, New 
Hampshire, the yellow-breasted or sapsucker is 
the most numerous. It may fairly be said to 
be abundant in that district. I base this state- 
ment upon my daily count of birds seen between 
April and the middle of October in the years 
1889 and 1890. I frequently record seeing from 
seven to ten of these birds in a day. Their fa- 
vorite haunts are mixed growths of young birch, 
larch, hemlock, maple and white ash bordering 
water or wet lands. 

My attention has been drawn to the yellow- 
breasted woodpeckers on two accounts, — their 
quicknevss to observe and persistence in scolding 
my tame owls when in the woods ; and their de- 
struction of certain forest trees. 

During the summer of 1890, 1 was led to spend 
a considerable time in close study of these wood- 
peckers and their feeding habits, by the peculiar 
relations which I noticed as seeming to exist be- 
tween them and humming-birds. My observa- 
tions were given point by my recollection of the 



132 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

difference of opinion among ornithologists re- 
garding the diet of these woodpeckers and their 
motive for tapping sap-yielding trees. I had 
heard it said that their sole reason for drawing 
the sap was to attract insects which they then 
fed upon. I had also heard that they ate the 
tender cambium layer which intervenes between 
the bark and wood of trees. I knew well that 
the birds were insect-eaters, for I had often seen 
them fly into the air with the grace of a tyrant 
flycatcher or cedar-bird and capture insects on 
the wing. 

On July 19, while watching a group of birds 
gathered in the woods around my tame owl, 
Puffy, two yellow-breasted woodpeckers and a 
humming-bird attracted my attention. The wood- 
peckers were scolding the owl, when the hum- 
ming-bird darted towards one of them, hummed 
before it, rushed at the other, and then seeing 
the owl flew at him squeaking furiously. Then 
it flew back to the first sapsucker and perched 
near it. On the 21st, I returned to the spot and 
found near by a sapsucker 's " orchard " of about 
a dozen canoe birches and red maples, most of 
which were dead, some decayed and fallen. The 
tree most recently tapped was a red maple about 
forty feet high and two feet through at the but. 
The drills made by the woodpeckers began 
eighteen feet from the ground and formed a gir- 



SAPSUCKEES AND THEIR GUESTS. 133 

die entirely around the trunk. This girdle con- 
tained over 800 punctures and was about three 
feet in height. In places the punctures or 
drills had run together, causing the bark to gape 
and show dry wood within. The upper holes 
alone yielded sap. From this I inferred that 
what the birds obtained was the elaborated sap 
descending from the leaves through the fibres of 
the inner bark. I tasted the sap and found it 
unmistakably sweet. The leaves on branches 
above the drills drooped; those below were in 
good condition. I watched the drills on this 
tree from 12.30 P. M. until 2, and from 4 until 6. 
I was concealed in the bushes to the northwest 
of the tree. During almost all of this period 
of three and a half hours one or more wood- 
peckers were in the tree engaged at the drills. 
They were a male, female and two young birds. 
Four visits were paid by humming-birds in the 
time named. The visitors were driven away by 
the woodpeckers. At 5.30 I shot one of the 
young birds in order to determine the number 
of individuals using the orchard. His absence 
was unnoticed by the survivors. 

The next day, July 22, I watched from 9.30 
A. M. until 1 P. M. The male, female and one 
young bird were present, the tree being seldom 
left by all at once. Ten visits were paid by 
humming-birds ; in five cases the birds reached 



134 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

the drills, and hovering, drank sap from one or 
more of them. In the other cases, the wood- 
peckers being present, the hummers were driven 
away. The work of the woodpeckers seemed 
to me, armed as I was with an excellent opera 
glass, and sitting not more than thirty feet from 
the drills, to be perfectly plain in character. 
Daring the morning the female drilled four 
or five new holes. They were above others in 
perpendicular series. They yielded sap freely. 
She was closely attended by the young one, who 
occasionally swallowed pieces of the soft bark or 
cambium layer taken from the bottom of the 
drills. The female also ate some of it. When 
not drilling or resting, the female dipped sap 
from the holes near by. The male drilled no 
holes but dij)ped in those yielding sap. The 
dipping was done regularly and rather quickly, 
often two or three times in each hole. The sap 
glistened on the bill as it was withdrawn. I 
could sometimes see the tongue move. The bill 
was directed towards the lower, inner part of the 
drill, which, as I found by examination, was cut 
so as to hold the sap. I looked carefully again 
and again to try to find insects in the sap, but 
none were there although numbers crawled upon 
the bark. Occasionally the birds by a nervous 
motion of the head caught an insect. There 
was no doubt as to when they did this, either on 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 135 

the bark or in the air, for in swallowing an in- 
sect they always occupied an appreciable time 
in the process. 

During the forenoon I nailed to the tree near 
the drills three tiny cups of birch bark. These 
I filled with maple syrup. The birds, although 
not disturbed by these cups, did not then drink 
from them. In the course of the morning I shot 
a crow and two blue jays from where I sat, 
but the sapsuckers, although greatly startled by 
the reports, returned quickly after their first 
fright. 

The day following, July 23, I was on duty at 
the tree from 9 A. m. until 6.30 p. m. I lay on 
the ground concealed by the spreading branches 
of a beech tree ; my watch hung from a twig be- 
fore my eyes, while, equipped with pencil and 
paper, I took notes of all that occurred from 
minute to minute throughout the day. My 
record runs as follows : — 

Wednesday, July 23, 9 A. m. Arrive, climt) tree, fill 
cups, male sapsucker comes, scolds, goes off. No 
insects in the sap. 

9.08. Male returns, dips from six holes. 

9.09. Goes out on dead limb. 

9.11. Hummer takes sap from two holes. I could hear 

no humming. Male quiet. 
9.15. Young woodpecker comes. 
9.17. Goes out on limb, having dipped 37 times in 9 

holes. Male flies. 



136 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

9.20. Young dips 39 times from 13 holes. 
9.22. Goes out on limb. 

9.26. Male comes, dips 15 times from 9 holes. 

9.27. Male drills a new hole. Hummer comes and 
goes ; gets nothing. 

9.28. Young flies north. 

9.30. Male catches insect on the wing, goes on limb. 

Catches another insect on wing. 
9.32. Hear a hummer. Male drums. 
9.34. Male dips from four hole. Flies west. 
9.44. Male returns, dips 9 times, 7 holes, goes on limb 

— drums, preens. 
9.47. Hear drumming. 

9.50. Female comes from north, they chatter. Male 
flies north. 

9.51. Female dips, goes on further side of tree and drills. 

9.52. Comes to cups, tastes syrup in one. 

9.53. Flies away, east. 

10.01. Male comes from north, dips 17 times, 12 holes. 
10.03. Flies north. Hear a hummer. 

10.09. Female comes from east, dips in drills and then 
from cup No. 1, 4 times. 

10.10. Flies east. 

10.37. Female comes. 

10.38. Male comes. Female dips 4 times in cup No. 1 
and goes east. 

10.39. Male dips in 5 holes, taps on bark, preens. 
10.42. Goes out on limb, scratches and preens. Seems 

to have lice. 
10.45. Young conies. 

10.47. Male goes to another tree, undrilled, and begins 
drilling. Young dips in 40 drills. 

10.48. Hummer comes. Yomig drives it off. 

10.50. Young stands on cups and dips in a few holes 
many times. 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 137 

10.53. Still dipping from same holes. 

10.57. Still clipping at intervals. 

10.58. Male comes, nervous, drills. 

10.59. Young tries to drill, four feet above drills. 
11.02. Male and young both drilling. 

11.06. Male dips, goes out on limb. 
11.10. Young dips. 

11.15. Male dips, goes back on limb, flies east. 

11.16. Young dips from cup No. 3 and from new holes. 

11.17. Young digging in old holes. 

11.19. Young dips from holes and dips twice in cup No. 3. 

11.20. Goes on limb. 

11.22. Dips from holes just made by male. 
11.25-11.30. Still dipping at intervals. 

11.32. Male comes from east. Young goes. 

11.33. Male drills. 

11.35. Looks at cup. Goes out on limb. 

11.37. Catches insect on wing, brings it to the tree, 
crowds it into hole, and eats it piecemeal. 

11.38. Female comes. Goes direct to cup No. 1 and dips 
4 times. 

11.40. Female dips in new hole and drills one. 

11.47. New hole done, after 6^ minutes hard chiseling. 

11.49. She catches insect on the wing, puts it in a hole 
and eats it. 

11.50. Hear a hummer. 
11.52. Female drills. 

11.55. Dips, goes on limb, wipes beak and preens. 

12 noon. Female completes toilet, dips and flies away. 

12.05-12.10. I examine tree. What appeared to be 
drilling new holes was mainly clearing dry wood 
from existing drills and running several drills 
into one large one. The drills are always lower 
at the back next the wood than at the front, thus 
forming cups for the sap to collect in. The holes 



L38 FROM BLOMWON TO SMOKY. 

begun by the young did not reach the cambium 
layer. I find no insects in sap or syrup. 

12.23. Female comes from north, dips, pecks and preens. 

12.27. On limb preening. 

12.30. Still there. I go home for dinner. 
2.30. Return. Young in tree. I climb, he flies. I 
place a flame-colored nasturtium above cup No. 1. 

2.37. Female comes, dips in new holes. 

2.38. Sees nasturtium — petrified by astonishment. 

2.39. Hitches towards flower, and touches it three times, 
with her bill. Satisfied, dips. 

2.40. Drills and later does nothing. 

2.48. Catches an insect on the bark by a quick pecking 

motion. Goes on limb. 
2.51. Young comes, dips. No notice of nasturtium. 

2.53. Young goes on limb. Female comes in and drills. 

2.54. Youno- comes in and walks over nasturtium. 

2.55. Female drinks from both cups, bill glistens. 

2.57. Both fly. Young seems color blind. 

2.58. Male comes, dips, goes near flower, does not no- 
tice it at all. 

3.00. Male preens, clinging to bark. 

3.01. Female returns. Male dips. Both preen. 
3.09. Male dips. 

3.13. Male hops to nasturtium and touches it with bill 
three times. Looks at cup but dips in holes. 

3.15. Nasturtium blows away. 

3.19. Male dips. Female drinks 17 times from cup 
No. 1 and once from a drill. 

3.22. Male sleepy, dips now and then. I peep, mew, 
whistle, hoot, bark and talk, but no sound makes 
the birds do more than move their heads. 

3.28. Hummer comes ; sees male and retreats. 

3.29. Male dips. 

3.30. Female flies east. 



SAPSUCKEES AND THEIR GUESTS. 139 

3.33. Male dips and goes on limb. 

3.37. Male hangs wings and opens beak. Sits in sun. 

3.42. Preens, comes in and dips, goes back. 

3.47. Yonng comes, dips 30 times. Male goes on limb. 

3.52. Hummers near, male comes in, very lively, dips. 

3.56. Male drills. Young stays close to him. 

3.58. Young goes on limb and hangs his wings down 
each side, so they show underneath the limb. 

3.59. Male goes on limb. 

4.00. Male comes in and tries to catch passing flies. 

4.02. Young wakes and preens. 

4.04. Male begins new hole. 

4.05. Male goes on limb. Young dips. 

4.07. Young drinks 4 times from cup No. 3. 

4.08. Male dips. Young goes on limb. 
4.10. Male goes out. 

4.13. Male comes in, and dips. 

4.17. Young flies in, male goes out. Young dips 48 

times from drills. 
4.25. Both quiet. 

4.27. Male comes in. Young dips. 
4.30. Male drills new hole higher up. 
4.35. Young flies east. 

4.40. Young comes from east, dips, male dips. 
4.50. Male and young dipping. 
4.55. I squeak, hummer flies in and alights. 
4.59. Female has been gone 90 minutes. 
5.00. Male motionless. Young in next tree. 

5.06. Male dips, and flies away on seeing me. 

6.07. Young comes in and dips 16 times from cup No. 3. 

5.13. After dipping in holes goes to cup and dips 5 
times. 

5.14. Female comes from south, young flies south. 

5.15. Female touches cup 3, then goes to cup 1 and dips 
13 times. 



140 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

5.16. Goes out on limb. 

5.20. She drills, and coiitiimes to drill a long time. 

5.35. Hummer comes, alights, flies away. 

5.36. Young comes and dips. Female goes. 

5.38. Young dips 7 times in cup No. 3, then in several 
new liolos. 

5.41. Male comes. 

5.44. Young dips in cup No. 3, 7 times, flies off. 

5.46. Male rattles around over cups and bark, but thus 
far I have not seen him drink from cups. 

5.49. Young returns, dips 3 times from cup 3. He al- 
ways wipes his bill in a drill after drinking syrup. 

5.55. Young dips again in cup 3 and flies south. 

5.56. Male flies in and clings close to cup. 
6.00. Hummer near. 

6.02. Male dipping and preening. 

6.08. Young comes from south. 

6.12. Male and young dipping. 

6.18. A hermit thrush alights on the limb from which 
the woodpeckers always take flight. Young flies 
at him twice and drives him away and out of the 
tree. 

6.30. Young still dipping ; I go home. 

On fliily 24 instead of going to Orchard No. 
1, as I shall call that already described, I went 
first to another half a mile northeast of it, where, 
in August, 1889, I had seen sapsuckers drilling 
a canoe birch, and humming-birds and a downy 
woodpecker apparently sharing in the profits of 
the tree. 

I reached Orchard No. 2 at 6.45 A. M. The 
tree in use last year was nearly dead. Two 



SAPSUCKERS AND Til KIR GUESTS. 141 

neighboring birches showing scars of earlier 
years were quite dead. All stood on the crest 
of a kame. About three rods along the ridge 
to the eastward, a red oak and two or three 
canoe birches were in use by the birds. Five 
sapsuckers, including a male, female and three 
young, were frolicking and dipping. The male 
was somewhat rough with the young birds. I 
stayed until 7.30. Humming-birds made thir- 
teen visits in that time and were generally al- 
lowed to dip freely. A black-and-white creeping 
warbler was driven from the tree. A red- 
eyed vireo was not disturbed in the higher foli- 
age. Three separate times while one humming- 
bird was dipping another came. The effect was 
astonishing. Volleys of squeaks proceeded from 
both birds. They dropped directly downwards 
from the tree about twenty feet, and when close 
to the tops of bushes and brakes began to go 
backwards and forwards like a long pendulum, 
the trunk of the tree coming opposite the lowest 
point of their course, and the arc made by them 
measuring about forty feet. Their humming 
and squeaking were continuous. At the end of 
the performance only one bird was to be seen, 
and he quietly perched in the tree. I think 
this oscillating flight was made five or six 
times in each of the three performances which 
I witnessed. 



142 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

The following evening, July 25, 1 visited Or- 
chard No. 2 again. One sapsucker and two hum- 
ming-birds were at work dipping between 7.20 and 
8 p. M. The pendulum act was not performed. 
The hummers were not disturbed by the wood- 
peckers. They continued to dip until it was too 
dark for me to see them, although I could hear 
their wings. 

On the preceding morning, after my visit to 
Orchard No. 2, I spent a short time at Orchard 
No. 1. I found the birch bark cups empty. I 
filled them, and as I reached the ground the young 
woodpecker came and began dipping from cup 
No. 3. He dipped ten times, then poked into two 
drills and flew away. The female came immedi- 
ately after, dipped in a few drills, saw the fresh 
syrup, dipped ten times in cup No. 1, and flew 
away. That day and the 26th were rainy. On 
the 27th at 6.15 a. m. I saw a male hummer work- 
ing on evening primrose blossoms. He ignored 
other flowers. I reached Orchard No. 1 at 6.35. 
The young one was there. I filled cup No. 1, 
the others being torn or warped. A hummer 
flew almost into my face while I was in the tree. 
About twenty new drills had been made since the 
23d, all being higher up the trunk than previous 
ones. About two inches in height had been 
gained. I remained on the watch nearly nine 
hours, going away only for meals and a brief visit 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 143 

to Orchard No. 2. During the nine hours the 
male paid ten visits to the tree, the female four 
and the young one three. Forty-one visits were 
made by humming-birds ; in several instances 
two were in the tree at once. The tree swarmed 
with insects, mainly large flies. One or more 
butterflies came. Early in the morning, I added 
brandy and sugar to the maple syrup in the cup. 
The humming-birds with one exception dipped 
only in the drills. In one case a humming-bird 
drank for sixty seconds (including a rest of ten 
seconds) from the cup. He then flew away. 
The young sapsucker dipped only from the drills, 
the female dipped thirty times or more from the 
drills, and twenty-five times from the cup. The 
male dipped fifty-four times from the drills and 
worked a little in deepening holes, drank sixty-six 
times from the cup and caught twenty insects, 
some on the wing, some on the edge of the cup. 

I noticed with surprise that the humming-birds 
in more than one instance took sap while clinging 
to the bark with their feet, their wino^s beins: at 
rest. I have been told by a careful observer that 
they cling to the trumpet flower in the same way 
while crowding themselves into its mouth to draw 
its sweets. 

My notes refer again and again to the spite- 
ful treatment of the hummers at Orchard No. 1. 
On the other hand, at Orchard No. 2 they -say, 



144 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

" Male and young one dipping. Hummer comes 
in and dips several times between them and they 
offer no objection." 

In spite of the fact that one young bird had 
been shot from the family at Orchard No. 1, the 
tree was without woodpeckers only about one 
hour out of the nine that I watched it on July 27. 

On the 28th, I arrived at Orchard No. 1 at 7.28 
A. M. and watched it for two hours. On my ar- 
rival I filled one cup with brandy, sugar and 
syrup, and another, a new one, with pure brandy, 
and a drop or two of the mixture on top. A 
humming-bird's arrival at 7.30 brought the male 
sapsucker from a neighboring tree. The hum- 
mer was driven away. The woodpecker dipped 
several times and then tried the pure brandy. 
He shook his beak and hitched away from the 
cup. Then he went out on the limb used as a 
regular point of departure and flew north, as 
my notes say, " pointing and flying as though for 
a long trip." At 8.13, a male hummer drank 
forty seconds from the cup containing the brandy 
and syrup mixture. At 8.16, a female hummer 
drank twenty seconds at the same cup. Both ig- 
nored the drills. At 8.42, a female hummer while 
drinking was attacked again and again by the 
wasps and bees surrounding the tree, and com- 
pelled to defend herself. At 9.05, the female 
woodpecker arrived, dipped in a few holes and 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 145 

then went to tlie brandy cup. She drank six 
times, then went out on the limb and presently 
began shaking her head violently, showering 
drops from her beak in every direction until she 
had thrown up what I estimated to be two tea- 
spoonfuls of liquid. She flew away eastward, but 
soon returned and remained until 9.30, when she 
flew north " as for a long trip." 

I then hurried to Orchard No. 2 and remained 
there from 10.07 until 11.15. On some of the 
trees at this orchard a thick growth of small 
sucker branches was conspicuous just below the 
drills. I think it was caused by them. It served 
as a screen for the sapsuckers. During this 
hour three woodpeckers were at work dipping, 
and occasionally catching some of the numerous 
insects of which the air was full. Seven visits 
were paid by humming-birds. One of the trees 
in use by the woodpeckers, hummers and in- 
sects was a red oak. The drills in it were very 
small and round. At 11.15, I went into a large 
swamp to the east of Orchards 1 and 2 in search 
of fresh evidence. After walking a quarter of 
a mile, I paused and hooted like a barred owl. 
A young sapsucker promptly appeared, and a 
moment later a humming-bird, which alighted 
close to the woodpecker. Seeing no owl, the 
humming-bird flew off towards the point from 
which the sapsucker had come. I followed and 



146 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

found Oreliard No. 3, consisting mainly of trees 
girdled long ago and now dead. The tree in 
use was a red maple. Its drills were about 
twenty-five feet from the ground. One bird was 
dipping; two more came soon after. After a 
brief stay I went home to dinner. Returning 
at 2.45, I stayed until 4.15. A downy wood- 
pecker passed without going to the drills. At 
3.35, I killed two young woodpeckers with a 
single charge of dust shot. A few moments 
later a humming-bird alighted in one of the 
dead maples. At 4.10, I was drawn away by 
the hooting of a barred owl, and did not re- 
turn to Orchard No. 3 until August 7, when I 
found only one sapsucker at work, a young one, 
which I shot. I do not think that I found the 
principal trees in this orchard. 

I ended my observations of July 28 by a visit 
of twenty-five minutes at Orchard No. 4, wliich 
I had first seen three years before. It consisted 
of a large number of dead and a few living trees, 
which stood on a delta formed by the Chocorua 
River at its point of union with Chocorua Lake. 
The part of the orchard in use was a birch, from 
whose root rose four major trunks quickly subdi- 
viding into fifteen minor stems each rising to a 
height of over thirty feet. All of these fifteen 
trunks were dead or dying. Only seven of them 
bore leaves. I reached this orchard at 6.25 p.m.. 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 147 

and finding no birds in sight placed Puffy on a 
stimip close to the drills, which were only seven 
to nine feet from the ground. Instantly a hum- 
ming-bird appeared, buzzing and squeaking, and 
the next moment a female sapsucker came into 
the tree scolding. I removed Puffy and soon 
after the humming-bird began dipping, giving a 
squeak each time he dipped. At 6.50, the hum- ^ 
mer, again discovering Puffy, flew within ten 
inches of his eyes, buzzed indignantly and flew 
away. 

On August 5 from 3 to 4 p.m., no sapsuckers 
came to Orchard No. 4 and only one hummer. 
A high wind was blowing. 

On August 7, I visited Orchard No. 1. About 
twenty new holes had been made since July 28, 
and great quantities of frothy sap were wasting. 
The sap was as sweet as though artificially sweet- 
ened. I saw one young sapsucker and one hum- 
ming-bird ; neither of them dipped. The wood- 
pecker caught several insects. 

On August 8, I reached Orchard No. 4 at 6 
A.M. At 6.03 a hummer came. At 6.06 a 
young sapsucker came and began dipping. I 
had with me, instead of one of my barred owls, 
one of three young screech owls which had been 
confided to my care for the season. " Scops " 
was placed in a conspicuous position in the heart 
of the orchard. The sapsucker had scarcely be- 



148 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

gun dipping when he saw the owl and raised the 
alarm. Over thirty birds came, including two 
hummers. By 6.30 the noise subsided, and the 
sapsucker, who had not left the tree at all, re- 
sumed his dipping. A male hummer was also dip- 
ping at 6.31. At 6.42, the sapsucker was dipping 
within seven feet of my head, and the hummer was 
perched close by. At 6.47, the hummer buzzed in 
Scops' face and then perched again. At 6.52, an- 
other hummer came and both flew away ; at 6.54 
both came back, but went again. At 6.56 Scops, 
whose wing was clipped, jumped nearly six feet 
at the young sapsucker, at whom he had been 
glaring for some time. The woodpecker flew 
with a loud cry, scolded for a long time and then 
disappeared. I nailed a birch bark cup to one 
of the stems, and while doing it a hummer came 
and looked at me. Later he came again, looked 
at the cup and dipped at drills close above it. 

I spent from 10 a.m. until 12.34 at Orchard 
No. 2, for the purpose of shooting all sapsuckers 
seen there. I found last year's tree again in use, 
and those in use July 24 and 25 temporarily 
abandoned. From 10 to 10.48, the sapsuckers 
seen, spent all their time catching insects on the 
wing, sometimes flying fifty feet for them. Hum- 
ming-birds were numerous, and, as I had no- 
ticed was the case with this orchard, were un- 
molested even when dipping within a foot of a 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 149 

sapsucker. At 11.15, I fired while a hummer 
and young sapsucker were both dipping, and 
killed the woodpecker. At 11.47, I tried again 
and killed a sapsucker and male hummer with 
the same charge. At 12.12, a female hummer 
came and dipped for forty seconds. At 12.27, 
I shot another young sapsucker, and at 12.34 
a fourth. As I left the orchard, a female hum- 
mer was dipping. 

On August 10, I spent from 5.30 P. M. until 
6.30 at Orchard No. 4. A young sapsucker and 
hummer were in the drilled tree during the en- 
tire hour. Although I climbed into the tree to 
put maple syrup in the cup, the woodpecker did 
not leave the branches. Neither bird took any 
syrup. 

On August 13, I reached Orchard No. 2 at 
6.40 A. M. At 7.09, a hummer buzzed in my 
face so near that I was startled and waved her 
off. At 7.15, a hummer was dipping in a canoe 
birch near by. At 7.17, I fired at her but 
missed. She dipped again at 7.29. At 7.32, I 
fired again and failed. At 7.37, she was dipping 
again and then perched near by. She dipped 
again at 7.45 and 7.49, and I tried a third shot 
which was successful. At 7.58, a female hum- 
mer was dipping in the same spot. At 8.07, I 
left without having seen a woodpecker but with 
the certainty that more than a single pai^ of 
hummers used Orchard No. 2. 



150 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

On August 14 at 3 p. M., humming-birds were 
using Orchard No. 2, but the supply of sap was 
diminishing and no woodpeckers were to be 
seen. I shot away a small limb which I noticed 
the humming-birds perched upon, and a few 
moments later one returned and flew in zigzag 
lines near the spot, searching for the missing 
twig. The same or another bird repeated the 
search a few minutes later. At 4 p. M., I reached 
Orchard No. 1, which seemed deserted, nothing 
coming during an hour and a half. Great 
streams of frothy sap extended down the bark 
to the ground and formed a moist spot on the 
leaves and mould. The trees smelled sour and 
the lower sap tasted sour. I climbed to the 
drills. The upper holes were blowing bubbles 
of sap, and a slow current was flowing from them, 
readily visible to the eye. Many kinds of in- 
sects were upon the trunk, including ants, com- 
mon house-flies, and hornets. One of the last 
named stung me without other provocation than 
my presence, and I descended rapidly from the 
tree. By a mark made on July 23, I was able 
to determine that in three weeks the drills in 
this red maple had been carried eight inches up 
its trunk. 

On September 5, I paid a final visit for the 
season to Orchard No. 1. There were no birds 
present between 2.30 and 3 P. M. But little sap 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 151 

was flowing. The tree looked in better condi- 
tion than in July or August. Great numbers 
of hornets were in control of the tree. A few 
butterflies hovered near, but were driven away 
by the quarrelsome hornets. 

On May 1, 1891, I took advantage of a brief 
trip to Chocorua to visit Orchard No. 1. The 
sapsuckers were there and had evidently been at 
work several days. The red maple, their princi- 
pal tree, was covered with flowers above the belt 
of drills, and with newly opened leaves on its 
lower limbs. The female was dipping at a series 
of new drills which had been opened two feet 
above the old belt. Forty-three holes had been 
cut on the trunk and nearly as many more on 
several adjoining limbs. Sap was flowing from 
the upper holes only, and not in abundance. It 
was slightly sweet. The male came to the tree 
once during my stay of half an hour, but he 
spent most of his time on a poplar a few rods 
distant, where he was digging his family man- 
sion. The poplar was a vigorous tree, aboufc 
forty feet in height. The hole was on the south- 
east side of the trunk a little more than twenty 
feet from the ground. It seemed to be already 
four or five inches deep. The birds were noisy, 
especially so when the female went to inspect the 
male's digging, and when the male came for a 
moment to the drills. Only two sapsuckers ap- 



152 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

peared, and no humming-birds were to be seen. 
There were practically no insects to be found 
near the drills. 

During July and August, 1890, I shot in all 
eight sapsuckers at the various orchards. I 
preserved their stomachs, which were well filled 
with insects. Some of these stomachs were 
examined by Professor Hagen, who wrote to me 
on August 21st as follows : — 

" The woodpecker has hashed his food so 
fine, that it is beyond my power or knowledge 
to determine accurately the composition of this 
bug-hash." 

Mr. Samuel H. Scudder was able to speak 
with more confidence of the stomachs which I 
sent to him. Under date of December 19, he 
said : " The insects in the different stomachs 
are in all cases almost exclusively composed of 
the harder chitinous parts of ants. In a cursory 
examination I find little else, though one or two 
beetles are represented and No. 4 must have swal- 
lowed an entire wasp of the largest size, his head 
and wings attesting thereto. If the birds were 
very different in habit, or presumably in food, 
a comparison of the kinds of ants might lead to 
the detection of some peculiarities. A number 
of species are represented." 

It is worthy of note that the structure of the 
tongue of this species is somewhat unlike that of 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 153 

the tongues of other woodpeckers. In form it 
is not adapted to use as a dart for securing 
insects, and its fringed edges have suggested to 
biologists who were not observers of the bird's 
habits that sap might, as in the cases of species 
with similar apparatus, form an important por- 
tion of its food. The following extract from 
a letter written to me by Mr. W. F. Ganong, 
Instructor in Botany at Harvard University, 
gives a clear history of the progress of sap in its 
ascent and descent. 

" It is now thought by botanists that the elab- 
orated sap from the leaves is transferred down 
the stem through the soft bast cells of the inner 
bark, just outside of the cambium layer. It 
hence passes to the medullary rays, where it is 
stored up to last over the winter in the form of 
starch chiefly. Some of it is stored also in £he 
wood cells of the young wood — but none I 
believe in the ducts or fibres or main masses of 
the wood itself. In the latter there is a current 
of crude sap from the roots flowing up, but I 
do not think any botanist thinks that the elabo- 
rated sap flows down by the same path. Hence 
if the woodpecker in July or August penetrates 
the wood^ he would get only crude sap from the 
ordinary wood tissue, but he might get elaborated 
sap from the med»i..llary rays or some of the 
smaller wood cells — much more of the former 



154 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

(i. e. unelaborated) tlian of the latter (i. e. elab- 
orated), I should say. If he penetrates to the 
cambium only he would get elaborated sap 
(which is being transformed into tissue), and if 
he penetrated the soft inner bark only he cer- 
tainly would get elaborated sap flowing down- 
ward, and probably that only. If it is elaborated 
sap he wants, he would do much better to go 
no further than the inner bark and cambium. 
The medullary rays are so small in proportion 
to the size of a woodpecker's bill and tongue 
that he would receive but poor wages for his 
labor in penetrating them. Of course in spring 
before the leaves are fully out, the sap is very 
rich as it flows up, both in starchy and albumi- 
noid matters, and then it would be worth working 
for. But as late as July and August, the upward 
flowing sap, while it contains traces of these nutri- 
tious substances, must be very poor in them. 

" I never thought of the question before, be- 
cause I did not know that woodpeckers bored 
for sap. I always supposed it was insects and 
their larvae they were after." 

SUMMARY. 

From these observations I draw the follow- 
ing conclusions : that the yellow-breasted wood- 
pecker is in the habit for successive years of 
drilling the canoe birch, red maple, red oak, 



SAPSUCKERS AND THEIR GUESTS. 155 

white ash and probably other trees for the pur- 
pose of taking from them the elaborated sap 
and in some cases parts of the cambium layer ; 
that the birds consume the sap in large quan- 
tities for its own sake and not for insect matter 
which such sap may chance occasionally to con- 
tain ; that the sap attracts many insects of various 
species, a few of which form a considerable part 
of the food of this bird, but whose capture does 
not occujiy its time to anything like the extent 
to which sap drinking occupies it ; that diiferent 
families of these woodpeckers occupy different 
"orchards," such families consisting of a male, 
female, and from one to four or five young birds ; 
that the " orchards " consist of several trees 
usually only a few rods apart, and that these 
trees are regularly and constantly visited from 
sunrise until long after sunset, not only by the 
woodpeckers themselves, but by numerous para- 
sitical humming-birds, which are sometimes un- 
molested, but probably quite as often repelled ; 
that the forest trees attacked by them generally 
die, possibly in the second or third year of use ; 
that the total damage done by them is too in- 
significant to justify their persecution in well- 
wooded regions. 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 

I SPENT much time during the summer of 
1890 in watching yellow-breasted woodpeckers 
at work in their " orchards " near Mt. Cho- 
corua, N. H. From my observations I drew the 
following conclusions, that " the yellow-breasted 
woodpecker is in the habit ... of drilling . . . 
trees for the purpose of taking from them the 
elaborated sap, and in some cases part of the 
cambium layer ; that the birds consume the sap 
in large quantities for its own sake and not for 
insect matter which such sap may chance occa- 
sionally to contain ; that the sap attracts many 
insects of various species, a few of which form a 
considerable part of the food of this bird." 

These conclusions differed so radically from 
opinions held by many ornithologists that some 
persons, who either doubted the sufficiency and 
unimaginativeness of my observations, or who 
read my conclusions without scrutinizing my state- 
ments of fact, were unwilling to admit that I 
had proved the yellow-breasted woodpecker to 
be a sap-drinker. In order to present additional 
and different evidence in the case, I determined 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 157 

to secure several living sapsuckers, to cut them 
off as completely as might be practicable from 
insect food, \\> feed them if possible upon con- 
centrated maple sap, and to see whether a diet 
of that kind would sustain life. It was possible 
that they might refuse to eat anything, that they 
might eat the offered food but die in a few days, 
that they might live for a time but show distress 
and inability to digest the food. On the other 
hand it was possible that they might take kindly 
to the diet, thrive upon maple syrup, and live for 
weeks, perhaps months, in a manifestly healthy 
condition. I had confidence enough in my pre- 
vious observations to believe that the birds would 
relish syrup, and would live upon it for a suffi- 
ciently long time to induce those who still consid- 
ered the birds insect eaters only, to admit that a 
contrary presumption had been raised. 

It was first necessary to secure the birds. Hav- 
ing failed, in 1890, to catch old birds by making 
them tipsy, I decided to secure a nestf ul of young 
birds before they took to the wing. Searching the 
forest near Orchard No. 1, I found, on July 1, a 
nest filled with noisy fledglings whose squealing 
sounded afar in the otherwise silent woods. The 
hole was on the south side of a living poplar, about 
twenty feet from the ground. Two old holes 
scarred the trunk. The parent birds came fre- 
quently to the tree, and their arrival was alwuys 



158 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

greeted by more vigorous crying from the young. 
On the 6th, I visited the nest again and found 
both old birds feeding the young, which were 
now much nearer the mouth of the hole. The 
old birds scolded me on my approach, and the 
young remained silent for a long time after 
hearing the warning notes of their parents. 

On Tuesday, July 7, at noon, I raided the nest. 
The poplar was felled so that its top caught in a 
tree near by, preventing any shock to the young 
birds. In spite of the resounding blows of the 
axe, the old birds continued to come to the nest, 
and in the intervals of chopping they fed the 
young. Moisture glistened on their bills, and I 
was not sure that they brought insects in any 
instance. One young bird flew before the tree 
fell, a second took wing as the crash came, but 
the third remained in the nest until taken out by 
hand. I named them Number One, Number Two 
and Number Three, corresponding to the order 
of their entry into active life. Their coloring 
varied sufficiently for me to recognize each with 
certainty after his transfer to a cage, and as weeks 
passed by they became more and more dissimilar 
both in coloring and conduct. 

Their cage was an oblong pine box containing 
about three cubic feet. Its floor was covered with 
sawdust, its face was closed by fine wire mosquito 
netting, and apple and alder branches were ar- 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 159 

ranged for perpendicular and horizontal perches. 
A slidinof door allowed me to handle the birds 
when necessary. During the afternoon of the 
day of their capture I fed each bird four times 
with sugar and water. Holding each little crea- 
ture in my left hand I slid the tip of a small quill 
toothpick between its mandibles, when it quickly 
drank the few drops of liquid held in the half- 
filled quill. The second time I did this the bird 
opened its beak willingly. By the fourth lesson 
the rapid use of the long and nervous tongue in 
draining the quill of every particle of moisture 
showed that the quill was a satisfactory substitute 
for the parent's bill. 

At 5 A.M. on July 8, the young sapsuckers be- 
gan a lively " rat-tat, tat-ta-ta, tat-tat" on the 
resounding sides of their box. They were un- 
mistakably hungry when, an hour or two later, I 
presented the point of the quill at a hole in the 
wire netting. One bird after another drank the 
diluted maple syrup with which I filled the tube. 
I repeated this process at intervals of about half 
an hour until evening, the birds becoming more 
and more expert in draining the quill and more 
and more prompt in responding to my offers of 
nourishment. Number One was the most rest- 
less and aggressive ; Number Three, the slowest 
in feeding, and the least hungry. It was also 
the dullest in coloring. On the 9th, the -birds 



160 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

did not begin to stir until about 7 o'clock, tbeir 
cage having been darkened so as to prolong their 
slumber. On my presenting the quill all three 
tried to drink at once, and Number One was very 
rough with the others, striking them sharply with 
his beak. His violence led me to add a second 
room to the cage, into which the others could 
withdraw to escape him. I placed it directly 
above the other, with a round hole in the floor 
opposite a similar opening in the top of the first 
cage. None of the birds noticed the hole, either 
from below or from above, when put in the upper 
room. I placed cups of birch bark and wooden 
troughs filled with syrup in various parts of both 
cages, but the birds did not go to them. They 
took more syrup than on the 8th, drinking a 
greater number of times and more at each time. 
Towards evening, I exchanged the quill for a 
slender spout of birch bark through which I let 
the syrup ooze. They drank from the spout, 
from the netting down which drops coursed, and 
from the wood upon which the drops fell. Num- 
ber One made his first attempt to catch a fly on 
the netting, but failed. 

During more than half the day the birds were 
in motion, flying from one side of the cage to the 
other, hitching up and down the netting or the 
perpendicular perches, and pounding on the net- 
ting, boards and perches. Twice they gave the 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 161 

squealing note of alarm so characteristic of the 
wild sapsucker. At night I looked to see how 
they slept. They were side by side, hanging 
erect upon the back wall of the cage, with their 
heads tucked under their wings. One by one 
they waked, and turned with sleepy surprise to 
look at the lamplight glaring at the mouth of 
their cage. 

On July 10, 1 made serious efforts to teach the 
birds to feed themselves. Catching them at in- 
tervals, I dipped their bills into the syrup in 
their cups, forcing them to drink. By 9.30 A. M. 
Number One had learned his lesson. Two hours 
later Number Two drank voluntarily, and a little 
after one o'clock the feeble and timid Number 
Three followed suit. Early in the afternoon, 
Three seemed so exhausted by the blows show- 
ered upon her by One and Two, that I thought 
she was going to die. I took her out and allowed 
her to perch upon the top of the cage. Suddenly 
she revived, slipped through my hand, flew the 
length of the open barn, out into the trees be- 
yond, and was gone. After searching for her 
for over an hour, I gave her up as lost. 

At 8 A. M. the next day I heard a sapsucker 
squeal near the house, and running out found 
Three sitting on top of a clothes-line post. She 
looked bright and knowing, but did not offer to 
fly, even when I extended my hand to catch her. 



162 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Clasping her quickly, I carried her back to the 
cage. She was very hungry, and went at once 
to a cup and drank long and often. Her brief 
outing had given her courage to stand up against 
the attacks of the others, and I had no further 
anxiety for her health. I filled their cups at 8 
A. M., 1 p. M., 4 p. M., and at dark, ^ — the last as 
a precaution against unseasonable tapping in the 
morning. 

During the next few days I filled the cups 
several times a day, and the birds drank freely, 
and seemed happy and perfectly healthy. On 
July 17, being satisfied that the birds never 
would learn to go up and down between the 
upper and lower cages, I removed the upper cage 
and placed it on the floor beside the lower one, 
opening a door between the two so that the birds 
could hop through from one to the other on the 
same level. They did this at once. I then added 
a third room which could be entered by a door in 
its side, and found that the birds quickly availed 
themselves of the chance to be alone for a part 
of each day. 

One warm day I sprinkled the birds with 
water. They were greatly astonished, but at 
once surprised me as much as I had them, for 
they flung themselves upon the floor and went 
through all the head, wing, and feather motions 
of a bath, scattering about chips and sawdust in 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 163 

a most energetic way. It was their first acquaint- 
ance with water. I at once supplied them with 
a large dish of water, in which they bathed 
occasionally during the summer, — usually, it 
seemed to me, towards evening, and when no 
one was near. 

The smell of maple syrup which pervaded 
their cage of course attracted insects, which 
crawled up and down the outside of the wire net- 
ting, occasionally finding a crack in the cage and 
entering. The young birds were always on the 
alert to catch one of these intruders, and made a 
great fuss eating it, — squealing, and crowding 
into a corner to hold it securely between their 
breasts and the boards, until they could swallow 
it in just the right way. The number of insects 
caught by them in this way was small, and I do 
not think amounted at any time to ten per cent 
of their food. 

Within a week after the birds' capture, I felt 
sure that Number Two was a male, because red 
feathers appeared on his throat. I surmised 
that Number Three was a female, partly on ac- 
count of her more subdued coloring and partly 
from her gentleness. Number One bullied both 
Two and Three and was more noisy than they. 
By July 20, I had reduced the number of their 
syrup cups to one — a large earthen saucer 
which I filled once a day, sometimes twice. If 



164 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

I allowed the saucer to become dry, the wood- 
peckers drummed more and more vigorously un- 
til I supplied their needs. Sometimes all three 
birds would drink at once. They were astir by 
5.30 A. M., and still noisy at 8 p. M. On July 
20, my notes say, " They are perfectly healthy 
and happy." 

About noon on July 23, the door of the wood- 
peckers' cage was opened by mistake, and not 
long after, I discovered that Three had escaped 
for a second time. I searched for her in vain. 
The next day rain fell in torrents all the fore- 
noon. About one o'clock, the cry of a sapsucker 
was heard through the closed windows of the 
house, and Three was discovered clinging to the 
piazza railing just in front of my study window. 
She was wet and dismal. I tried to catch her 
with my hand, but she flew to the nearest tree 
trunk, where I secured her by throwing a piece 
of soft mosquito netting over her. The moment 
I placed her in the cage she fastened herself 
beside the cup and drank many times. After 
satisfying her hunger, she retired to the darkest 
corner of the cage to dry and doze. The other 
biVds paid no attention to her. 

On July 25, two downy woodpeckers were 
working in my orchard. Taking a trout rod and 
line, I made a small slip-noose at the end of the 
tip joint and poked it into the tree where one of 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 165 

the woodpeckers was inspecting the bark. He 
watched the rod and seemed puzzled by it, but 
did not fly. Slowly lowering the noose I let it 
settle around his neck, and then by a slight jerk 
drew it tight. He flew in small circles round 
and round the tip of the rod, held by the noose, 
and slightly choked by it. A minute later, freed 
from the line, he was in the sapsucker's cage. 

He was a young bird, like the sapsuckers, and 
I supposed that the latter would not notice that 
he was not one of their own family. I thought 
it possible that he might follow their example 
and drink syrup from the cups, for I had once 
seen a downy woodpecker dipping at one of the 
sapsucker's " orchards." Unhappily, however, 
the stranger was not welcomed kindly, and as I 
was called away for the day, he had no defender. 
The sapsuckers pursued him from one corner of 
their cage to another, striking him fierce blows 
on his head and over his eyes, until he fell to the 
floor exhausted. Reviving, he again attracted 
their notice and attack, but his second fall was 
his last. 

About August 1, it seemed to me that the sap- 
suckers were unusually restless ; they whined 
and scolded a great deal and went from room to 
room incessantly. I think that at this season 
the wild birds begin to frequent their " orchards " 
less regularly than in May, June, and July. -The 



166 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

captives tapped a great deal, and I gave them 
a variety of things to play upon, as, for example, 
a sweet-toned glass tumbler, thin sheets of zinc, 
and resonant pieces of wood arranged to give 
out various tones. They tested these things, but 
seemed to prefer the sides of their cage, espe- 
cially portions walled with clapboards, which 
yielded a great volume of sound to their blows, 
I spent many hours in noting down the number 
and order of their taps, in order to see whether 
they constituted distinct signals. At first it 
seemed to me that Number One liked to tap in 
twos and fours, that Number Three was more 
apt to make threes, or threes and fives, than 
other combinations, and that Number Two 
mingled fives and twos. The longer I listened, 
the more combinations I found them making, 
and at last I decided that with these birds it was 

mere chance whether they said or - 

or They seemed to pay no attention to 

each other's performances, and to mean nothing 
by their own tappings. If they tapped at all, it 
was necessary to make some number of taps and 
to space those taps in some particular way. If 
in a large number of such series, ones, twos, 
threes, fours and fives came equally freely and 
frequently — as they seemed to — there ap- 
peared to be no ground for imagining that the 
different combinations indicated different feel- 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 167 

ings or impulses. Nevertheless, I think the old 
birds at Orchard No. 1 during July, 1890, called 
each other by tapping, and I do not feel at all 
sure that closer study than mine might not work 
out a sapsucker code. 

On August 9, I noted that the birds were " as 
noisy as a boiler factory, " and that One and 
Three were showing reddish coloring on their 
heads. Three, I speak of as " gentle and refined," 
but One is constantly alluded to as rough, noisy, 
and restless. I tested their color sense by pla- 
cing some flaming nasturtiums in the front of 
their cage. They did not even look at them, but 
trampled back and forth over them until the 
flowers fell. 

On August 13, a very warm day, I saw one 
of the sapsuckers bathing at 7.30 p. M., when it 
was nearly dark in the cage. On the 14th — a 
rainy day — one of them bathed about 6 p. M. 
When the sun fell upon their cage in an after- 
noon, the birds often sought the sunlight, and, 
standing in it, drooped their wings and opened 
their mouths as though suffering. They could 
readily have avoided its heat. 

On August 17, I was away all day, and the 
sapsuckers' syrup dish became dry. Early on 
the 18th, the birds began pounding so furiously, 
that, as my notes say, " they could be heard a 
quarter of a mile away." When I filled their 



168 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

dish they crowded around it, and all three drank 
at once. They consumed more than a table spoon- 
ful of the diluted syrup between 7 and 11 A. M. 
Ordinarily they disposed of eight teaspoonfuls 
each during the twenty-four hours. Part of this 
evaporated, and part was probably secured by 
black ants which visited the cage by night. On 
August 25, I did not give the young woodpeck- 
ers any syrup until late in the day. Then I of- 
fered syrup and insects at the same time. They 
ignored the insects and drank long and often of 
the liquid. Later they ate the insects. I kept 
a dish of water in their cage all the time, but 
they were seldom seen to drink from it. 

On September 4, I placed the woodpeckers' 
cage in a finished room in the barn and opened 
their door to see what they would do with lim- 
ited liberty. Number Three showed the effects 
of former freedom by coming first to the door- 
way and perching in it. After a moment. One 
flew out past her and bumped against the win- 
dow pane. Ten minutes elapsed before Two 
came out. Then they flew back and forth from 
window to looking-glass, curtains to woodwork. 
I handled them freely, and they seemed to have 
no feeling of fear. They clung to my fingers, 
and perched upon my shoulders. All the inte- 
rior finish interested them, and they hammered 
wood and glass, paint and plaster with vehe- 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 169 

mence. One of them hopped back and forth over 
the board floor, striking it now and then as if it 
had been a great log, prostrate. Three caught 
a few of the many flies in the room, but showed 
no eagerness over them. The others scarcely 
tried to catch them. That night they slept in 
separate corners. In the night I lit a candle 
and looked at them. They awoke, squealed, and 
Three came to the syrup and dipped twelve 
times. The red on her head seemed brighter 
day by day. I also noted that Two was grow- 
ing more yellow below. On September 6, I 
noticed that One and Three were together while 
Two remained much alone. He seemed to be 
moulting. During the next fortnight I let the 
birds out once or twice each day and watched 
them closely. Three was the only one which 
seemed to care much about catching house flies, 
and she secured very few. Black ants visited 
the cage at night, and occasionally I heard the 
birds moving about a great deal, although their 
cage was as dark as it could well be made. By 
September 11, Three had transferred her affec- 
tions from One to Two. The latter's plumage 
had by that time become quite brilliant ; the 
yellow and black below, and the red on head and 
throat, making him a decidedly distinguished 
looking bird. He made up for all Number One's 
earlier bullying and browbeating by scolding 



170 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

him and driving Mm from perch to perch. 
When free in the room, Two and Three spent 
most of their time upon a great horizontal 
timber, a portion of the framework of the barn, 
which ran through the upper part of the room. 
It had been rough-hewn by the sturdy hands 
which had framed the barn many a long year 
before, and patches of bark still clung to its 
surface. The devoted couple ran up and down 
the upper surface of this beam, tapping from 
time to time upon its flat face, never upon its 
edges. One stayed in the cage much of the 
time when Two and Three were together. He 
seemed jealous and far from cheerful. None of 
them ever went back to the cage voluntarily, 
and as time passed they did their best to avoid 
me when I was ready to lock them up. 

On the evening of September 12, the birds 
were very restless. Between eight and nine 
they were drumming furiously. The night was 
dark, and not a ray of light found its way into 
their cage. On September 16, they continued 
their hammering until 10 p. M. They took less 
syrup than usual at this time and caught practi- 
cally no insects. On September 21, my notes 
speak again of the small quantity of syrup con- 
sumed by the birds. On September 26, the birds 
were brought to Cambridge in a small box. 
They were fed in the usual way, and drank fre- 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. Ill 

quently from their dish while the train was at 
rest. The next day they were given a room to 
themselves. It was eight feet by five and was 
lighted by a window looking into an upper entry. 
Opposite and above the window was a large sky- 
light through which sunlight streamed into their 
room for several hours each day. They promptly 
chose the curtain roller at the top of the window 
as their favorite perch, and to this I attached 
their syrup dish, which they recognized and 
used at once. 

For several days they seemed perfectly well 
and contented. They hammered the woodwork, 
cut holes in the plastering until they reached the 
laths, and drilled small holes in the floor. Ab- 
solutely no insects gained access to their room. 
On October 4, I state in my notes that they 
never seemed more happy or more energetic. 
They bathed freely at this time while I was in 
their room, and seemed to enjoy the water 
greatly. 

On October 11, I recorded the fact that Three 
seemed dull and allowed me to catch her with- 
out opposition. On the 12th, she was evidently 
feeling far from well and stayed on the floor, 
but Two and One were unusually cheerful. On 
the 13th Three showed alarming symptoms. As 
early as 7 a.m. she had a convulsion, throwing 
herself upon her back and struggling violently. 



172 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

Reviving, she drank some syrup and seemed bet- 
ter, but the spasms recurred at frequent inter- 
vals during the day. She kept her head moving 
up and down a great deal of the time. When 
a spasm was imminent, she turned her head 
far around to the left, and, with her neck thus 
twisted, spun around towards the left seven or 
eight times, then fell upon the floor and beat her 
head upon it. After most of these spasms she 
drank from her cup, and during the day she at6 
four flies which I gave her. The last attack 
was at 5.30 p. m., and not long after she was 
found dead. I placed her body in the hands 
of several graduate students in biology at the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, and received 
from one of them. Dr. Thomas G. Lee, the 
foUowino: statement : " We found the intestines 
quite empty. In the stomach, which was deeply 
bile-stained, was a ball composed of cotton fibres 
and containing fragments of insects. The liver 
was very large, deeply bile-stained, and very 
soft. The other organs were apparently normal." 
The body was plump, and large deposits of fat 
covered the abdomen. 

On Sunday, October 18, Number One, who 
had been dull for a day or two, showed symptoms 
similar to those of Number Three. He had 
several convulsions and was weak after them. 
I gave him lemon juice. For several days I had 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 173 

been trying to change the diet of the surviving 
birds, but they refused everything except their 
syrup and a fly or two which they seemed to care 
for but little. Among the things offered them 
were a sweet apple, a pear, a peach, grapes, and 
earthworms. I diluted their syrup more than 
usual, and put lemon juice with it. Number 
One's condition was such on the evening of the 
18th that I had no hope of finding him alive on 
the next morning. He survived, however, 
although in a most pitiful condition ; his eyes 
winked frequently, he seemed to see little, and 
that little in such a way as to confuse distances ; 
his breathing was unnatural and he trembled 
constantly. Monday passed, and while One 
grew no better. Two became seriously ill. On 
Tuesday morning, both birds were alive, that was 
all. At eight o'clock. Two had a violent convul- 
sion and never recovered from it. A few moments 
later One, who had clung to life with such tena- 
city, died in the same way — maintaining to the 
last the advantage which he had first claimed in 
the nest. Number One was examined by an 
expert physician in Cambridge, who pronounced 
his liver enormous and in a diseased condition. 
It nearly filled the abdominal cavity, crowding 
other organs. It was soft and greenish. Num- 
ber Two was forwarded to the Department of 
Agriculture, which reported that the bird " had 



174 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

enlargement and fatty degeneration " of tlie 
liver. The most probable cause of this enlarge- 
ment of the liver, which seems to have been the 
reason for the death of the three sapsuckers, was 
an undue proportion of sugar in their diet. In 
a wild state they would have eaten insects every 
day and kept their stomachs well filled with the 
chitinous parts of acid insects. Under restraint 
they secured fewer and fewer insects, until, dur- 
ing the last few weeks of their lives, they had 
practically no solid food of any kind. Two of 
them lived in captivity exactly fifteen weeks, 
and the third fourteen weeks. During that time 
they subsisted mainly upon maple syrup diluted 
to half its strength with water. This diet was 
not refused nor disliked by them at the outset ; 
quite the contrary, it was adopted readily. It 
did not cause speedy death, nor even indigestion. 
The birds did not mope and pine ; they enjoyed 
life, changed their plumage as much as caged 
birds could be expected to do, and until nearly 
the time of their deaths manifested no abnormal 
condition. In fact, they throve upon maple syrup 
and were in an apparently healthy condition for 
more than three months. 

SUMMARY, 

From these experiments I draw the following 
conclusions : (1) that the yellow-breasted wood- 



YOUNG SAPSUCKERS IN CAPTIVITY. 175 

pecker may be successfully kept in captivity for 
a period corresponding" to that during which as 
a resident bird he taps trees for their sap, sus- 
tained during this time upon a diet of which 
from 90 to 100 per cent is diluted maple syrup \ 
(2) that this fact affords evidence of an ex- 
tremely strong character, in confirmation and 
support of the theory that, when the yellow- 
breasted woodpecker taps trees for their sap, he 
uses the sap as his principal article of food, and 
not primarily as a bait to attract insects. 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 

Since June, 1888, I have liad in my posses- 
sion for longer or shorter periods eleven live 
owls, including snowy, great-horned, long-eared, 
barred, and screech owls. I have also had oppor- 
tunities of watching Acadian and screech owls 
in a wild state. In Jane, 1888, I secured two 
young barred owls from a hollow beech-tree in a 
White Mountain forest. I have them still after 
three and a half years of happy companionship. 
During the first summer they were pets not easily 
petted. They used beak and claws fiercely and 
resented familiarity. I kept them in a large 
slatted cage in my barn, where they had plenty 
of air and light. They bathed freely and fre- 
quently. They ate largely of animal food. 
They were awake by day, restless at twilight, 
but profoundly quiet by night. They could see 
perfectly in bright sunlight, and better at night 
than most creatures. In the autumn I took them 
to Cambridge, where they were given a large 
cage in my cellar. During the winter I handled 
them more and more freely, beginning by using 
stout leather gloves, but soon stroking and rub- 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 177 

bing their heads with my bare hands. They 
became more and more gentle, and I found that 
even when they ni^^ped me with their beaks 
they did not attempt to cause serious pain. One 
of them, whose name is Puffy, injured his wing 
early in his captivity, and has never been able to 
fly. The other I keep clipped in one wing. In 
the spring of 1889 I began taking Puffy with 
me on walks. I found at once that he was 
wonderfully useful in attracting other birds. 
During the summer of 1889, the following winter, 
and the summers of 1890 and 1891 he was my 
companion on walks, drives, and trips in my 
Rushton boat. To a smaller extent I have 
taken his mate Fluffy with me, but he is of a less 
patient disposition than Puffy, and during a long 
walk is sure to hop from the stick upon which I 
carry him many more times than Puffy would 
in an equal period. In May, 1891, I secured a 
third baby barred owl from the same beech-tree. 
From the first hour that he was imprisoned he 
has shown an irritable temper. His whining 
as a young bird was incessant by day and not 
always suspended by night. Now, at the age 
of nine months, he whines whenever any one 
approaches him, and frequently makes violent 
assaults upon me when I enter the part of my 
cellar in which the owls are penned. Puffy and 
Fluffy during their first summer were quite 



178 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY, 

timid, and Fluffy is an arrant coward now ; but 
Prince Edward, as the new captive has been 
named, has never shown fear of anything living 
or dead, large or small. 

Of two fully grown screech owls which I 
owned, one in the spring of 1890, the other in 
the spring of 1891, little is to be said. They 
were unhappy, and, although they ate well, both 
died from the effects of pounding their heads 
against wire netting in efforts to escape. These 
owls, when approached, stiffen their ears, make 
their feathers lie closely against their bodies, 
keep every joint and muscle rigid, and so nearly 
close their eyes that only an expressionless slit 
remains through which they watch the intruder. 
To the gentle caress of a hand they pay no heed. 
I have often taken one 6f them in my hand, laid 
him upon his back, and so carried him from 
room to room, and not been able to detect the 
movement of a feather. Let, however, the in- 
truder retire, or let him take a dead mouse from 
his pocket and draw it by a string across the 
floor, and Scops is himself again in a twinkling. 
The ears are lowered, the bright eyes open wide 
with a wicked glare, and the soft wings take the 
crafty and cruel little bird swiftly down upon the 
mouse. This habit of shamming unconscious- 
ness appeared to be characteristic of the long- 
eared owl which was mine for a few brief hours 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 179 

in October, 1891. I handled liim freely, but 
the closed eyes and rigid muscles did not move. 
I went away and watched him from a distance, 
and he was alert and making full use of his 
beautiful eyes. 

Early in the summer of 1890, a friend sent 
me three young screech owls. They were as odd 
little gray hobgoblins as could be imagined. 
Their temper, their voices, their appetites — all 
i;ieeded superlatives to describe them. They 
were sent to the White Mountains for the sum- 
mer, and lived in a slatted box under the barred 
owls' big cage. They loved mice, birds, and 
fish, but did not take quite as kindly to raw 
liver as the barred owls did. For a week or 
more two of them were taken away from the 
third, and when they came back they no longer 
knew him as a brother. His life was made a 
burden to him, and one morning in August I 
found his body lying on the floor of their cage. 
They had removed nearly all his feathers and 
would probably have devoured him if I had not 
deprived them of the fruits of their unnatural 
crime. A few days passed and the two mur- 
derers quarreled over a mouse. In the frequent 
struggles that followed, one was killed outright 
and the other survived but twelve hours. My 
efforts to tame these young screech owls were 
only partially successful. The murdered one liad 



180 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

taken several excursions with me, and while 
I walked clung to a stick carried in my hand, 
or nestled between my arm and my body. If 
placed in a tree he served quite well as a decoy, 
although perhaps some species of birds did not 
take him as seriously as they did the barred 
owls when those intruded uj)on their breeding- 
grounds. 

In June, 1891, 1 was presented with Snowdon, 
a full-grown snowy owl, which had been captured 
during the preceding winter. He was a danger- 
ous-looking bird, with a temper and a trick of 
jumping for one's fingers. I clipped one wing 
and began by handling him roughly if he showed 
a disposition to fight. At the end of a week 
he learned to step upon a stick and cling to it 
while I carried him back and forth in the cellar. 
Taking him to the White Mountains, I gave up 
to his use a box stall in the northeast corner of 
my barn, and kept damp reindeer moss for him 
to stand upon, plenty of water for him to bathe 
in or drink, and a moderate supply of food for 
his sustenance. Although we had some warm 
weather, he was in perfect health throughout the 
season, and is now in excellent condition. At 
first I kept the barred owls away from him, fear- 
ing that they might murder each other, but later 
experiments showed that Snowdon had no ill 
feeling toward the barred owls, and ignored 



WATS OF THE OWL. 181 

tliem even when they stole his portion of the 
food. It is now six months since I turned them 
ill together, and during the whole of that time 
the four birds have been on terms of quiet in- 
difference. 

About the middle of September, 1891, a Bos- 
ton dealer sent me a mature great-horned owl. 
He reached my country place just in time to be 
sent back to Cambridge with the snowy and 
barred owls. Clipping one of his wings, I 
placed him with the others in the 250 square 
feet of cellar space fenced off for them. Puffy 
prepared for war, Fluffy fled, Prince Edward re- 
garded the stranger with indifference, and Snow- 
don and the great-horned formed an alliance at 
once. Three months have passed, and, so far 
as I know, no conflict has occurred. The older 
barred owls fear and dislike the great-horned. 
Prince Edward treats him with brassy famil- 
iarity, and Snowdon stays with him in the cor- 
ner of the cellar farthest from the favorite perch 
of the barred owls. 

Having introduced my characters, I will now 
compare them in several particulars. They ar- 
range themselves, when I think of them as owls 
merely, into two groups — the brown owls and 
the gray owls. The grea,t-horned, long-eared, 
screech, and Acadian owls seem to me much 
alike in disposition and their way of meetmg 
man. They seem like kindred. 



182 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

The barred and snowy owls, while quite differ- 
ent from the brown owls, are somewhat alike 
in temper. They show fight when approached, 
and are very alert. The barred owls make sev- 
eral different sounds expressive of various emo- 
tions. They snap their beaks furiously when 
warning an enemy ; they whine when hungry ; 
they make a soft, rather musical " oo " when 
meeting after an absence ; they chatter with rage 
when pulling in opposite directions on the same 
bird or mouse ; and they hoot when expressing 
the sentiments which make the domestic cock 
crow. While young they make a queer chuck- 
ling chatter when cuddled, and as the sound 
grows faint it suggests the music of a brood of 
chickens nestling under their mother's feathers. 
The hooting varies. In the August twilight I 
often hear the loud trumpeting " hoo " uttered 
at intervals of half a minute or more by wild 
owls in the woods. The common hoot, which 
suggests to some ears feline music, is generally 
" hoo-hoo hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo hoo-hoo, " but I heard 
a barred owl this winter in a remote White 
Mountain valley say " hoo-oo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, 
hoo, hoo-oo. " He was a conversational and in- 
quisitive bird. By hiding in some evergreens 
and hooting to him I drew him little by little to 
the treetop just above me. 

Wholly different is the conversation of the 



WAYS OF THE OWL, 183 

snowy owl. His warning is sometimes beak- 
snapping, but oftener an open-mouthed, hissing 
"ah," which has a most menacing quality. He 
occasionally utters a shrill, whistling scream 
expressive of pain or the fear of pain, yet he 
makes it also when snatching a morsel of food 
held toward him. Thus far I have heard my 
great-horned owl make but four sounds : terrific 
beak-snapping ; ah-ing quite equal to Snow- 
don's ; a hooting which suggests wind sighing in 
a hollow tree, and taking the form of " whoo, 
hoo-hoo-hoo, whooo, whoo5 " ; and a series of 
soft, musical notes, rolled from his throat when 
Snowdon comes too near his clutched breakfast. 
My barred owls eat raw butcher's meat, mice 
and squirrels, bats, any kind of bird, hawk and 
crow included, fresh fish, lake mussels, snakes, 
turtle-meat, some species of frog, earthworms, 
some kinds of insects, and hen's or bird's eofofs. 
They will not touch toads or the frogs which se- 
crete an offensive scent. They rarely eat tainted 
meat or stale fish. Once they played for hours 
with a dead weasel, much as a cat plays with a 
mouse, but they did not eat any part of it. They 
catch living fish from a tank, and kill mice, squir- 
rels, birds, frogs, and snakes ; but they were at 
first greatly alarmed by a turtle, and a young 
hare running around their cage frightened them 
almost into fits. Puffy will face and put to flight 



184 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

a cat or a dog, but a pig is a terror to liim. 
When Puffy was only six months old he caught 
and killed a two-pound pullet ; yet in March and 
April, 1891, he roosted night after night on the 
same perch with an old Cochin hen which had 
begun her stay in his cage by giving him an un- 
merciful trouncing. 

So far as I have been able to ascertain, Snow- 
don will not kill anything, no matter how hungry 
he may be. He eats dead birds, mice, squirrels, 
fish, snakes, mussels, turtles, if opened, and 
butcher's scraps ; but he will make no effort to 
catch or kill a squirrel, mouse or snake, although 
shut up with them while hungry for a day or 
more. In one instance of this kind he ate a 
squirrel which he had allowed to live for twelve 
hours, as soon as it was killed and given to him. 
I have seem him drink once, and only once. If 
he bathes, it is a rare occurrence and done 
secretly. Early one morning in August, 1891, 
I heard a splashing in the owls' water-tank. It 
was about 3.30 A. M, Creeping to the cage, I 
peered in, and saw Snowdon shaking himself, as 
though he had just finished a bath. 

His method of eating is suggestive of a car- 
rion eater. The barred owls are deliberate in 
their way of treating their food. They search 
for and crush joints and finny projections. In 
a frog they feel of every limb from end to end, 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 185 

and crunch away at the joints until they are 
mellow. They generally pull out the stiff wing 
and tail feathers, even in quite moderate-sized 
birds. Small snakes they swallow squirming. 
Snowdon, on the other hand, ignores live snakes, 
and his first act with dead food is to swallow it 
whole if he can possibly distend his throat far 
enough to let it pass. I have seen the head of 
a large rooster vanish down his throat, bill fore- 
most, without his making any effort to crush it. 
Often a piece of food will stick in his throat 
and refuse to go down, in spite of vigorous 
jerks, jumps, and convulsive swallowing. It is 
then ejected and sometimes dropped altogether. 
With a large piece of meat or fish his method is 
different. Standing upon it, he snaps at it vi- 
ciously and tears off small bits, in eating which he 
makes a smacking noise. Engaged in this way 
he is a disgusting spectacle. His head is poked 
forward, and the feathers upon it seem flattened. 
The hairy feathers around his beak are drawn 
back, and his red mouth is open much of the 
time. If disturbed while eating, he makes his 
shrill and extremely piercing cry. He is per- 
fectly willing to be fed by hand, snapping at 
and bolting morsels of liver as fast as they are 
passed to him. He sometimes eats enormous 
quantities of food in a short time. He ate the 
whole of a full-grown bittern in twenty -four 



186 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

hours, and on another occasion a cooper's hawk 
placed before him at night had only one leg and 
a few feathers remaining in the morning. Like 
other owls, he ejects hair and bone pellets from 
his mouth. 

The great-horned owl is not so ready to be fed. 
He prefers to eat while alone. Mice, however, 
are too attractive to be refused, and whenever 
held before him are slowly and quietly taken 
and swallowed. Other food he usually pretends 
not to see until I have left him. He seems 
ready to eat anything that the other owls like. 
I know that he has bathed at least once this 
winter, and, judging by his plumage, he uses 
water freely. When given a cod's head or a 
large bird, he stands upon it and tears off mor- 
sels much as Snowdon does. His motions in 
doing this are sudden and his whole expression 
fierce and tiger-like. With horns slightly flat- 
tened and eyes glaring, he first plucks a piece 
of flesh from the carcass and then turns his head 
sharply from side to side to see whether any 
other owl dares to intrude upon his repast. My 
barred, snowy, and great-horned owls all feed 
freely in the daytime. My screech owls, on the 
contrary, usually waited until dark before de- 
vouring their food. One of them apparently 
ignored a live English sparrow for several hours 
while daylight lasted and the sparrow was able 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 187 

to see him, but when night came the sparrow 
was speedily caught, plucked, and eaten. 

The feeling with which other birds regard an 
owl seems to be a mixture of curiosity, hatred, 
and fear. Curiosity impels them to approach, 
hatred causes them to make violent and abusive 
cries, while fear inclines them to wariness and 
prevents them from open attack upon their 
sphinx-like enemy. This feeling of the birds is 
general, almost universal, and is shared in a modi- 
fied form by the smaller owls when brought in 
contact with large ones. To the chickadee or 
the warbler it makes no difference whether an 
owl is large or small ; he is an owl, and that 
prompts inspection and vituperation. In sev- 
eral instances I have found Acadian owls in the 
woods in consequence of the racket made by 
birds scolding them. This winter, on the day 
after Christmas, I was walking through a spruce 
thicket in Albany, N. H., when the noise of nut- 
hatches, Hudson Bay and black-capped titmice 
and kinglets enticed me into the darkest part of 
the growth. The birds were greatly excited, and 
as I softly drew near them I saw that they were 
in a circle, all facing toward some focus invisible 
to me. I crept farther, and saw the tail of a 
small owl projecting from behind the trunk of a 
tree. Presently his tiny monkey face was screwed 
around over his back, and his timid yellow eyes 



188 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

fixed tliemselves upon me. His tormentors soon 
flew away, and after studying me attentively for 
some time, the little Acadian floated ofl out of 
sight also. 

The young screech owl, whose death at his bro- 
ther's hands I have already mentioned, irritated 
the birds of the forest and meadow in the same 
way. I placed him, one morning, upon a birch- 
tree which was in use by a family of yellow- 
breasted woodpeckers as a sap-drinking place. 
The sapsuckers made a great clamor on seeing 
him, and their cries called together all the birds 
which were within earshot. At least thirty indi- 
viduals came, including kingbirds, cuckoos, cat- 
birds, veeries, chickadees, four or five kinds of 
warblers, red-eyed vireos, song sparrows, and two 
humming-birds. Having scolded for nearly ten 
minutes, they departed, leaving a sapsucker and 
a humming-bird, which soon forgot the owl and 
resumed their usual employment of drinking the 
birch-tree's sap. 

Several times during the summer of 1891, 1 
took my snowy owl out to walk. He weighs 
three and a half pounds, so the task of carrying 
him by hand upon an outstretched stick was 
rather a laborious one. The birds noticed him 
at once, and scolded as though he were of a spe- 
cies with which they were unpleasantly familiar, 
instead of one with which they were presumably 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 189 

wholly unacquainted. Thrushes of various kinds, 
warblers, vireos, swallows, and sparrows treated 
him precisely as though he had been a barred 
owl. Once a grouse, with a family of chicks, 
confronted him boldly for a moment, while her 
brood scattered to cover. His conduct while at 
liberty was somewhat peculiar. He shunned the 
woods, and if taken into them, quickly made his 
way out. His left wing being clipped, his only 
method of advance was by clumsy leaps, or by a 
queer wobbling run, aided by outstretched wings. 
Whenever I placed him upon the ground, he 
would hurry away to a distance, and stop to 
pant with his wings dragging wearily at his sides. 
One warm morning I left him on an open pasture 
hillside, and walked away to a belt of woods 
nearly an eighth of a mile from him. Conceal- 
ing myself in the bushes, I watched him closely 
through my glass for an hour and a half. The 
time was nearly a blank. The owl, satisfied that 
I had gone, walked toward me about a rod and 
sought the shady side of a small patch of juniper. 
There he remained almost motionless for the 
entire period. Sometimes he turned his head and 
watched crows at a distance. Once or twice he 
glanced at the sky, and in one instance he fol- 
lowed with his eyes the flight of a small bird. 
Looking toward the sun did not seem to affect 
his vision. That he could see things at a dis- 



190 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

tance was shown in several ways. When I came 
slowly from my hiding-place he saw me at once, 
and started jumping down the hill away from me. 
On another occasion I took him out in a pouring 
rain, thinking that he would go to the woods for 
shelter. He was content with standing under a 
small apple-tree which gave him practically no 
protection, a fact which he discovered and sought 
to remedy by running to another tree of the 
same kind. Inactive, unable or unwilling to kill 
mice or squirrels, even when most hungry, silent, 
vacant in expression, cowardly, apparently stu- 
pid, the snowy owl, judged by my one captive, 
is a dull and uninteresting member of an unusu- 
ally acute family. I doubt Snowdon's being a 
fair type of his species. 

The barred owls are the particular abomina- 
tion of other New England birds. They are cour- 
ageous, keen of vision by day and in the twilight, 
strong, alert, quick, yet crafty. Their voracity 
makes them the terror of every nesting mother, 
the scourge alike of the forest, the field, and the 
meadow. Of their merits as decoys there can be 
no doubt. If taken while young and clipped, 
they are readily tamed and taught to obey sim- 
ple orders. Mine have been invaluable to me in 
studying the birds of New Hampshire. When 
going for a walk, I take one or both of the older 
ones. Entering their cage, I extend a short stick 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 191 

toward and on a level with their feet, and say, 
somewhat sternly, " Get on." They generally 
bite the stick once and then step upon it, and 
cling to it patiently while I carry them through 
any kind of country. When I wish to have 
them attract other birds I hold them toward 
a convenient branch and say, " Get off," which 
they are very willing to do. Then by whistles 
or cries I attract some bird's attention, and if it 
proves to be a titmouse, a woodpecker, a thrush, 
or some other excitable bird, the alarm is given, 
and from all quarters the neighbors come pour- 
ing in to join the tumult. Even while holding 
Puffy on a stick and walking with him, I have had 
birds attack him. Once a pair of solitary vireos 
followed me for some distance, one of them fly- 
ing between my head and the owl three times, 
apparently not noticing me any more than though 
I had been a tree. A similar attack from a sharp- 
shinned hawk was more surprising than pleasant. 
Some species are less demonstrative than others, 
and seem to think silence and retreat wiser than 
vituperation. Cedar -birds, great crested fly- 
catchers, and scarlet tanagers are three species 
which seldom greet Puffy noisily. Game birds, 
as a rule, are too much afraid of me to remain 
near the owl, and the same is true of water-fowl. 
Loons have, however, shown curiosity on discov- 
ering Puffy, and sandpipers clearly dislike him. 



192 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

I tested this in an amusing way one day, by tak- 
ing Puffy out in my boat to a point just to wind- 
ward of a solitary sandpiper, and tben setting 
him adrift on a small board. At first the sand- 
piper did not see him, but as the wind carried 
the placid owl nearer and nearer the beach, the 
tattler suddenly discerned him, and became stiff 
with astonishment. He faced the owl, his head 
poked forward and his body rigid, then with a 
wild cry he flew, rising from the water and pass- 
ing over the trees, away from the lake. 

Whippoorwills are not easy birds to watch 
at night, but they usually fly toward the owl, 
uttering excited " clucks," and fly several times 
over it before going away to a distance. A mo- 
ther night-hawk, with young, showed great cour- 
age and sagacity in dealing with Puffy. I placed 
the owl near her nest. She promptly flew down 
on the side of the owl away from her young, and 
fluttered in the grass as though wounded. Puffy 
hopped toward her. She flew a few feet, he fol- 
lowed, she flew a rod, he followed a third time. 
She flew three or four rods, and, as he hopped 
on, she rose and circled around him until, if he 
had seen her nest in the first place, he never 
could have remembered in which direction it lay. 

The hooting of a barred owl in the daytime, 
or my imitation of the sound, almost invariably 
brings birds to the spot. Crows will come a long 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 193 

way in response to the hated call. So will blue 
jays, and several of the hawks and woodpeckers, 
hermit and Swainson's thrushes, chickadees, and 
a few other small birds, including the siskins in 
winter. Crows, in a particular region, soon learn 
that a barred owl implies a man in the same 
thicket, but for the first two or three times, hoot- 
ing will surely call them within short range. 

Although game birds usually avoid the owl on 
account of my presence, a grouse with a large 
brood of young on one occasion showed much 
courage in watching Puffy. Her chicks scat- 
tered, but she remained in sight, whining and 
trailing her wings and doing her best to entice 
the owl away from the spot. Once she came 
within ten paces of him, her tail spread like a 
fan and her wings arched like an angry hen's. 
Puffy paid little attention to her, but seemed to 
be looking for the chicks which he had heard 
stirring in the leaves. Whenever he hopped 
she rushed into view, whining. She remained 
near by during the whole of twenty minutes 
that I spent in her domain. 

In July, 1891, Puffy had a face-to-face meet- 
ing with a wild barred owl. Puffy was perched 
upon a stump facing a hemlock forest. Sud- 
denly he became rigid and assumed a very unu- 
sual attitude for him, his head being thrust for- 
ward and his body flattened so that his breast 



194 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

rested upon the stump. Following the. direction 
of his steady gaze, I saw a fine specimen of his 
race in the dark forest. He was as rigid as 
Puffy. How long they would have glared at 
each other I cannot tell, for it began to rain, 
and the stranger flew away. 

The hearing of all species of owls known to 
me is marvelously keen ; so keen in fact that I 
know of no way of testing it, since it is so much 
more acute than that of man. If owls have the 
sense of smell, I am unable to find satisfactory 
evidence of it. I have tried various experiments 
with them, hoping to prove that they could smell, 
but the results are all negative. They dislike 
putrid meat, but they bite it to ascertain its con- 
dition. They will not eat toads or frogs which 
yield an unpleasant odor, but they did not reject 
these species until they had tested them by tast- 
ing. They may be ever so hungry, yet they do 
not suspect the presence of food if it is carefully 
covered so that they cannot see it. This test I 
have applied with the utmost care to the great- 
horned, snowy, and barred owls. The latter are 
shrewd enough to learn my ways of hiding their 
food, and when they suspect its presence they 
will search in the places where I have previously 
hidden it, pouncing upon pieces of wrapping- 
paper, and poking under feathers and excelsior 
with amusing cunning. I tested them with the 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 195 

fumes of camphor, ammonia, and other disagree- 
able and unusual smells, but they failed to show 
that they perceived them unless the fumes were 
strong enough to affect their breathing or to 
irritate their eyes. Finally, I put a cat in a bas- 
ket and placed the basket between the two owls. 
They were utterly indifferent to it until the cat 
made the basket rock, when both of them fled 
precipitately, and could not be induced to go 
near the basket again. Although Puffy will 
put a cat to flight when on his mettle, Fluffy is 
frightened almost out of his wits by them. 

A Japanese toy-bird, made of a piece of wood 
and a few scarlet feathers, was eagerly seized 
by Puffy, indicating not only a lack of power 
of smell, but the presence of an appreciation of 
color. I have fancied that an appreciation of 
color is also shown by barred owls in their fre- 
quent selection of beech trees as nesting-places, 
by great-horned owls in their choice of brown- 
trunked trees, and by Snowdon in an apparent 
preference for gray backgrounds. 

To this real or imaginary ability of the owls 
to select protective backgrounds is to be joined 
an undoubted power of assuming protective 
shapes. My great-horned owl can vary at will 
from a mass of bristling feathers a yard wide, 
swaying from side to side as he rocks from one 
foot to the other, to a slim, sleek, brown post 



196 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

only a few inches wide, with two jagged points 
rising from its upper margin. When blown out 
and defiant, his bill is snapping like a pair of 
castanets, and his yellow eyes are opening and 
shutting and dilating and contracting their pu- 
pils in a way worthy of a fire-breathing Chinese 
dragon. In repose he is neither inflated nor 
sleek, but a well-rounded, comfortable mass of 
feathers. The barred owls go through the same 
processes of expanding and arching out their 
wings when awaiting attack, and of drawing all 
their feathers closely to their sides when endeav- 
oring to avoid observation. As noted before 
Puffy once escaped into the woods, perched 
upon a small oak stump, drew his feathers into 
such a position that he seemed a mere continu- 
ation of the stump, closed his feathered eyelids 
until only a narrow slit remained for him to 
peep through, and stayed perfectly stiff for an 
hour while I hunted for him high and low. I 
passed by him several times without bringing 
my eyes to the point of recognizing him as a liv- 
ing thing. This power is shared by the screech 
owl and the long-eared owl. The plumage of 
the snowy owl is so solid that he seems more 
scaly or hairy than feathered. He does not, so 
far as my specimen shows, expand and arch his 
wings. Instead of standing straight and be- 
coming slim and rigid, he crouches and flattens 



WAYS OF TEE OWL. 197 

himself when seeking concealment. I can im- 
agine him in his Labrador wilds crouching thus 
amid a waste of junipers and reindeer moss, and 
baffling the eye which sought to detect him there. 

The control which owls have and exercise over 
their feathers is not limited to moments when 
they wish to appear terrible or inconspicuous. 
They seem to ruffle them or smooth them, expand 
them or withdraw them in queer ways at pleas- 
ure. The barred owls, when stepping stealthily 
across a floor after a dead mouse drawn by a 
thread, tuck up their feathers as neatly as a 
w^oman holds her skirts out of the mud. When 
eating, the feathers nearest the mouth are pulled 
aside in a most convenient way. When wet, the 
feathers seem to shake themselves as well as to 
be shaken by motions of the body, head, and 
wings. My wife, in making a water-color sketch 
of Snowdon, complained that, although she 
could not see him move, he changed his outline 
a dozen times in an hour. 

The owl's eye is his most useful member. The 
popular belief that the owl is seriously blinded 
by light is almost wholly unfounded, at least so 
far as the species of which. I am writing are 
concerned. When a man approaches an owl in 
broad daylight the owl, in nine cases out of ten, 
will close his eyes, and so appear sleepy. As I 
have already explained, this is an effort to escape 



198 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

notice by tlie assumption of a protective shape. 
That it is not due to any dread of light or in- 
ability to see is shown by the following instances 
of perfect seeing by owls in bright daylight. 
Walking through a Cambridge road in March, 
1891, 1 saw an Acadian owl perched on a willow 
limb about fifty feet from me. His plumage was 
stiffened and his eyes nearly shut. I ap]3roached 
him and slowly raised my hand toward him. 
Suddenly his eyes doened wide and glared at me. 
Then the soft wings spread and he fell forward 
upon them, and flew toward the sun to a distant 
perch. The Acadian owl already mentioned 
as having been seen in December, 1891, in the 
spruce forest of the Swift Kiver valley, watched 
me keenly, and swung his small head around 
after the manner of owls, trying to see me 
clearly from more than one point of view. 

The screech owl which I first owned, although 
shamming sleep one morning when I entered the 
room where I kept it, pounced upon a dead mouse 
which I let fall upon the floor, and flew off with 
it before I realized what had happened. One 
of my three young screech owls when only two 
months old tried to catch a sap-sucking wood- 
pecker which had perched near it in the sunlight 
on a dead tree. My snowy owl, as I have al- 
ready stated, watches birds flying across the sky 
at a distance, and once saw me as I slowly 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 199 

emerged from the woods an eighth of a mile 
from him. Great-horned owls are well known 
to be active by day, and not inconvenienced by 
sunlight. The barred owls, however, exhibit the 
most marvelous powers of sight, and their eyes 
may well be called telescopic. In dozens of in- 
stances Puffy has seen, and by his fixed watch- 
ing of the sky has called my attention to, hawks 
flying at so great a height that they were well- 
nigh beyond man's vision. More than this, he 
has on two or three occasions seen a hawk ap- 
proaching in the upper air when my eyes, aided 
by a fairly strong glass, failed to see the bird 
until it drew nearer and grew large enough for 
me to detect it as a mere dot in the field of the 
lens. My eyes, by the way, are rather stronger 
and more far-sighted than the average. If the 
bird thus sighted by Puffy is a hawk or an eagle, 
he watches it until it is out of sight. If it proves 
to be a crow or a swift, he gives it merely a 
glance and looks away. The barred owls fre- 
quently look at the sun with their eyes half- 
closed for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. 
Why they do it I am wholly at a loss to explain. 
I am in doubt as to how much Puffy can see 
at night. I once held a cat within a few inches 
of him in the darkness, and he did not stir. Had 
he seen it, he would certainly have moved and 
probably snapped his beak. In August, 1891, 



200 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

I let him out after dark on a patch of closely 
cropped grass where the dim light enabled me 
to see him when he moved. I went to the near- 
est tree and seated myself with my back against 
its trunk and my legs stretched out before me. 
Half an hour passed, Puffy scarcely moving ex- 
cept when a bat flew over him, and I keeping 
perfectly motionless. At last he came toward 
me, slowly, a yard or two at a time. When he 
was within a few feet, I could see his outline 
quite plainly. One more hop brought him to 
my knee, upon which he jumped. Instantly he 
bounded into the air and made off, unmistakably 
frightened. He had no idea that he was going 
to strike a leg and not a log; yet if his eyes 
had been much keener than a man's he would 
have seen not only that my clothes were not 
wood, but that I was leaning against the tree 
trunk watching him. In several instances I have 
called wild barred owls at night and have had 
them alight in treetops close above me. I could 
see them against the sky, but apparently they 
could not see me sitting among the brakes and 
bushes below them. Once with an owl thus 
above me I imitated the squeaking cry of a 
wounded bird. I wished I had not, for the owl's 
ghostly wings brushed past my face so closely 
that I fell back into the bushes, fearing that he 
would strike at me again. 



WAYS OF TEE OWL. 201 

The memory of my owls is noticeably good. 
Puffy and Fluffy, the two barred owls which I 
have had longest, remember their favorite perches 
from season to season, and resume their chosen 
roosts after months of absence. In one instance 
Fluffy, on his return to Cambridge after four 
months in the mountains, flew the length of the 
cellar, expecting to strike a perch which had 
been removed, and, failing to find it, fell to the 
floor. It is only necessary for me to bring a box- 
trap into the barn for Puffy to come to the front 
of his cage, eager to be given a chance to catch 
the chipmunk which past experience leads him 
to believe is in it. Similar eagerness is shown 
in winter, when I bring a paper parcel into the 
cellar, the owls knowing so well that it contains 
food that they will tear it open themselves if I 
do not open it for them. If the bundle is brought 
in without their knowledge and thrown at ran- 
dom upon the floor, they do not find it, and will 
leave it for days untouched. Puffy does not like 
going out in my boat. If he finds that I am tak- 
ing him to the shore near it, he invariably jumps 
off his stick and tries to hide in the bushes. 
Snowdon knows a piece of cloth which I have 
used to throw over his head when I have wished 
to handle him, and the sight of it is enough to 
cause him to make strong efforts to escape from 
his cage. All three of the barred owls hide their 



202 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

surplus food, and remember where they keep it. 
Snowdon, on the contrary, sometimes stands over 
portions which he is not ready to devour, letting 
his feathers sink down so as to cover them. 
Puffy not only understands the commands " Get 
on " and " Get off," but he knows his own name, 
and generally answers when I call him by giving 
a friendly " clap, clap," with his beak. He has 
frequently revealed his position to me by this 
answer when I have lost him in the bushes, tall 
grass, or at twilight. That he especially, and all 
my other owls to a less degree, know me and dis- 
tinguish me readily from strangers, is, I think, 
undoubtedly a fact. Thus far I have been un- 
able to see that any of the owls have a clear no- 
tion of time, except as indicated by the coming 
or going of daylight. The digestive workings of 
owls are extremely economical. In summer the 
birds have enormous ap]3etites, and become fran- 
tic with hunger if not fed every forty or fifty 
hours. In winter, on the contrary, the mature 
birds fast for a week or more without complaint. 
During the winter of 1889-90 I could not ascer- 
tain that Fluffy ate anything for more than a 
month — that is, from Christmas-time until the 
first week in February. Throughout this period 
he seemed well, though inclined to keep quiet 
and to stay in the darkest corner of the cellar. 
When fed regularly and amply, all the species 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 203 

of owls witli which I have had any experience 
cast from their mouths egg-shaped " pellets," 
composed of the bone and hair, fish-scales, and 
feathers which remain in their stomachs after 
the digestion of the more nutritious parts of re- 
cent meals. This ejection is accomplished easily 
and quickly, with very little visible muscular 
action. It usually, or at least often, takes place 
at the moment when the owl has another hearty 
meal in view. The owls' furnaces burn nearly 
all that goes into them. Considering the amount 
of fuel put in, the extremely small amount of 
ashes is wonderful. 

In disposition my owls vary widely. The 
barred owls are — as owls go — remarkably 
sweet-tempered and gentle. I never have seen 
one offer violence to another, even when two 
were struggling over a morsel which both were 
determined to have. Snowdon is sullen, stupid, 
cowardly, and treacherous. The great-horned 
has a temper, but he generally keeps it concealed 
under an air of dignified reserve. My screech 
owls, when not shamming sleep or death, were 
irritable, quarrelsome, and ferocious. Between 
my three barred owls there are individual differ- 
ences in disposition, which are readily learned 
but not easily described. They stand out dis- 
tinctly in my mind as three characters, just as 
three children or three horses would be distin- 



204 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

guislied when I thought of them. I feel as much 
attachment for Puffy as I possibly could for an 
intelligent and faithful dog. His crippled wing 
has probably made him unusually docile and 
tractable, but, whatever may be the cause of his 
goodness, he certainly is a model of patience, 
placidity, and birdly virtue. This, in combina- 
tion with pluck, which leads him to charge upon 
and vanquish dogs, cats, and domestic fowls, and 
a magnanimity which enabled him to roost for 
weeks alongside of an old hen, will make him 
worthy of owlish canonization when in good time 
he is gathered to his fathers. 

(fKOM MR. BOLLES' NOTES.) 

March 28, 1893. I took four small mice to 
the door of the owls' cage. It was a week since 
the owls had been fed and they were very hun- 
gry. Fluffy was on a barrel close to the door. 
I called Puffy, and swung a mouse by its tail 
so that Fluffy near by, and Prince Edward eigh- 
teen feet away, could see it. Prince Edward at 
once flew up to the barrel. I called Puffy again. 
Then I tossed the mouse into the air and Fluffy 
caught it, going to the floor with it, and holding 
it in his mouth until Prince Edward came to 
him. Then Fluffy poked his head forward qui- 
etly, and gave Prince Edward the mouse. Puffy 
then came from the back corner of the cage, 



WAYS OF THE OWL. 205 

and I ffave liim mouse number two. I tossed 
mouse number three to Fluffy, who caught it in 
the air and forthwith gave it to Puffy, advan- 
cing to do so. Fhiffy also caught mouse number 
four and held it nearly two minutes before Prince 
Edward came down, walked up to him, grabbed 
it from him chuckling, and ate it. Then Fluffy 
looked up to me for more, but I had none. 

Monday, April 3d. I gave Fluffy a mouse. 
He held it in his mouth and looked long at Prince 
Edward, then at Puffy, and finally flew to the 
latter and offered it to him ; pushed it against 
his beak in fact. Puffy had a chunk of meat in 
his mouth and would not take the mouse. Fluffy 
then offered the mouse to Prince Edward, mak- 
ing many times a very curious " cluck, cluck, 
cluck, cluck," which closely resembled the call- 
ing of a domestic fowl. Prince Edward refused 
the mouse, and Fluffy offered it in vain first to 
one then to the other for ten minutes, clucking 
as he did so. 



BIRD TRAITS. 

While birds as a race have many habits and 
instincts in common, their family differences are 
strongly marked. The hawk and the humming- 
bird answer equally well to the scientist's defi- 
nition of a bird, but Napoleon and a bonbon 
maker answer equally well to his definition of 
man. The destroyer and the confectioner, 
whether among men or birds, have different 
ways of looking at life, and of dealing with their 
animate and inanimate surroundings. In hu- 
man communities the principal actors are the 
farmers, artisans, merchants, priests and teach- 
ers, soldiers, mariners, artists, knaves, and idlers. 
Perhaps I am over fanciful, but against each of 
these classes save one — the merchant — I can 
set without hesitation a group of birds whose 
life currents seem to me to run in as various 
channels as those of the great groups in human 
society. 

My abstract farmer is a burly fellow who 
rises early, whistles cheerily if the sun be bright, 
works in all weather, keeps to the fields rather 
than to the forest, and to whose senses nothing 



BIRD TRAITS. 207 

is more pleasant than the rustle of corn leaves 
and the sheen of grain undulating in the breeze. 
He is slow, persistent, graminivorous. 

Against him in the bird creation I set the 
sparrow. The sparrows, buntings, and finches 
love the sunshine. They are interested in the 
crops ; as a rule shun the gloom of the forest, 
and make their homes in fields and meadows. 
Before sunrise, in May, the clear whistle of the 
white-throat welcomes the coming dawn. When 
the snow first melts in April, or if by chance it 
wastes away in December or January, the snow 
buntings and j uncos are promptly at work in the 
ploughed fields or among the weeds left in the 
potato patch. Winter does not see the farmer 
moving to Florida or Cuba. He stays under the 
shadow of Chocorua, breaking the ice in the 
pond for his cattle, scattering corn to his fowls, 
listening to the voice of the ice in the night, and 
having a gun ready for the fox prowling about 
the barnyard at dawn. 

The birds around him in these wintry days are 
not warblers and swallows, vireos and thrushes ; 
they are sparrows. Nine tenths of them are pine 
grosbeaks, crossbills, snow buntings, siskins, or 
those joyous creatures of the snow country, the 
confiding redpoll linnets. Truly, farmers and 
sparrows belong to the land, cling to it, live by it, 
love it. Their acts and instincts are inspired 
by it and have its color. 



208 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

How different from tlie farming sparrows are 
tlie gulls and terns — children of sky and ocean, 
bred to the storm. They have no music. Their 
voices are shrill like the boatswain's. They have 
no home save a spot of sand or rock where their 
young are reared near thundering surf and moan- 
ing tides. Their lives are long-continued buffet- 
ings with wind and wave, — voyages under white 
wings across monotonous wastes of water. They 
are the mariners among birds, and all their ways 
have the mark of the sea upon them. The sea 
rules them, charms them, binds them to itself, 
and robs them as it robs their human counter- 
parts of much of the sweetness and rest of home. 

Not all of the birds which live among forests 
and flowers share in the sweetness of home life. 
There are among them, as elsewhere, discordant 
creatures who seem to draw no joy from joyous 
surroundings and whose deeds are full of selfish- 
ness and misappropriation of others' hopes and 
rights. Some of these birds carry their true char- 
acter clearly written upon their faces. The cow- 
bird is a sneak. Her glances are furtive. When 
seeking the home of a vireo or warbler, with the 
intent to thrust her Qgg upon the mercies of a 
stranger, she tells in every motion of her body 
the tale of her inherited wretchedness and con- 
scious guilt. The hawks and owls bear in their 
faces the imprint of evil. There is something 



BIRD TRAITS. 209 

in the expression of a dying bird of prey wliich 
suggests the agony of sin buried in remorse which 
comes too late. 

Owls and hawks are murderers by night or 
robbers by day. There is something inspiring 
in the sight of a great bird with wonderful 
powers of vision and flight soaring higher and 
hio-her towards the sun. Man cannot imitate his 
flight ; but there are men who do in spirit what 
the hawk or eagle does in the flesh. They with- 
draw their business plans and purposes far from 
the ken of their fellows and expected victims, 
and then from their vantage point descend to 
strike suddenly with the swiftness and cruelty of 
the plundering eagle. 

The owl reminds me of some men whom I 
have had the misfortune to know — silent and 
sinister by day or when exposed to the scrutiny 
of their fellows ; taking without reply or blow 
the taunts and abuse of those whom they have 
wronged ; but by night devils in thought, pur- 
pose, and action. To the owl everything which 
possesses the power of motion is, presumably, fit 
to be devoured; quadruped, bird, fish, reptile, 
insect, moUusk, any or all, unless specially pro- 
tected, invite to murder ; so with some men, no- 
thing is too pure, too beautiful, too defenseless 
to be sacrificed to their selfishness. One owl is 
enough for many miles of forest. Fortunately 
for society, owlish men are similarly scarce. 



210 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

There are some birds of deservedly bad repute 
who wear an attractive exterior and maintain 
jaunty manners. The blue jay, for instance, 
though somewhat flashy in his dress and loud in 
his voice, passes with the unsuspecting as a bird 
worthy of confidence, if not of admiration. Yet 
if ever there was a scoundrel in feathers, he 
is one. He is my ideal pickpocket, shoplifter, 
smuggler, and confidence man. Most people 
think his cousin, the crow, an undoubted villain ; 
yet he is considerably better off in morals than 
his gayly dressed relative. This is not saying 
that the crow is not a blackleg. 

Among men, the class usually victimized by 
rogues is that which is dressed and fed well, and 
luxuriously housed. There is such a class among 
birds, as the rogues rejoice to know. The war- 
blers toil little, talk much, live well, dress gayly, 
— always a la mode^ — and dwell in elaborate 
and beautiful houses. Redstarts, yellow-rumps, 
black-polls, and bay-breasteds make elaborate 
changes in their costumes. The parula lives in 
the most dainty of summer houses. The Cana- 
dian warbler wears a necklace of black pearls. 
The Maryland yellow-throat goes to a masque 
ball in a black domino every night in the season. 
There is nothing solemn or melancholy to these 
light-hearted, frivolous little birds. No sooner 
is there a chill in the air, a breath of something 



BIRD TRAITS. 211 

coming after August sunshine, than these chil- 
dren of the world start southward, not to return 
until all traces of snow have vanished. Truly 
the warblers must be counted the elite of bird 
society ; but they are as surely the frequent vic- 
tims of its knaves. 

The surest way to tell shoddy is to hold it 
against the true fabric. The same is true of 
shoddy people and shoddy birds. Mr. and Mrs. 
Tanager, he in scarlet coat and she in yellow 
satin, are best measured by contrast with the re- 
fined warblers. Their voices are loud, their man- 
ners brusque, their house without taste or real 
comfort. They have no associates, no friends. 
They never seem at ease, or interested in the 
misfortunes or joys of those beneath them. Un- 
fortunately there are other Tanagers in the world 
than those who wear feathers. 

If the sparrows are by nature children of 
the soil and the warblers children of the world, 
the thrushes are without doubt the artists, the 
musicians of the wood. I have never met a lover 
of New England bird music who would hesitate 
a moment about placing the hermit thrush and 
his next of kin foremost among the songsters of 
this part of the continent. They are true artists. 
Their music is exquisite in itself, and their ren- 
derino; of it is sincere and emotional. The her- 
mit thrush resting upon the low, leafless limb of 



212 FBOM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

a pine in the northern wihlerness, and rendering 
his several phrases deliberately, smoothly, pa- 
thetieally, is as true a nuisieian after his kind as 
the first tenor in the great cathedral choir, whose 
sweet, sad tones vibrate through vaulted nave, 
carrying to listening hearts the interpretation 
of the composer's immortal passion. Again and 
again, sununer after summer, as I have heard the 
song of this thrush, varying from the low, trem- 
ulous notes in his first phrase to the high, clear 
notes in the third, it has seemed to me that his 
song is to bird music what the Cujus Animam 
in Rossini's Stabat Mater is to the music of the 
Christian church. 

The first tenor and the cobbler may live in 
the same street and be good neighbors to the ex- 
tent of a cordial '' Good morning " or " Merry 
Christmas." So the hermit thrush and the yel- 
low-breasted woodpecker are neighbors and ac- 
quaintances. This woodpecker, commonly and 
justly known as the ^^ sapsucker," is the noisiest 
fellow with his awl and hammer in the whole 
forest. He wears a red and black cap and a 
yellow apron. His voice is loud and unmusical. 
His motions are ungraceful and full of jerks. 
He is inquisitive and loquacious. If a brawl 
between an owl and a mob of chickadees and 
nuthatches breaks the stillness of the swamp, 
his work is forgotten, and off he rushes full of 



BIRD TRAITS. 21.3 

noise to have a liaiid In the quarrel. His cob- 
l)lin<^ is effeetive. The second siunnier after his 
tapi)ing and girdling of a canoe birch, from 
which he and his associates have drawn the sap, 
is usually marked by the unmistakable failure 
of the tree's vitality. 

All the woodpeckers are artisans. They love 
the resonant tones of the trunks they tap or 
hammer, as the smith loves the ring of his anvil 
and the cooper the song of his hoops and staves. 
The largest among them is most like the black- 
smith. He is the logcock of the great northern 
forests. Black and strong, with a big voice and 
a temper, his eyes flash and his blows echo 
and (;ause ruin where they fall. Pie suggests an 
older age than this of steam sawmills and wast- 
ing forests " protected " against Canadian lum- 
ber. Just so the blacksmith seems a survivor 
of the age before machinery, when individual 
men made individual things, and division of 
labor and machines with replaceable parts were 
unknown. 

Among the other artisan birds are the brown 
creepers, perpetually winding imaginary spirals 
round the trunks of the hemlocks ; the nut- 
hatches, titmice, and wrens. Fortunately for the 
trees, these little workers know nothing of strikes 
or lockouts. If the first tenor ever goes in 
search of bright eyes among the artisan's daugh- 



214 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

ters, he must be charmed by the rippling, rol- 
licking trill of the winter wren. Like the brook 
which flows through the forest, now underground, 
now rippling across a patch of sunlight, cold as 
ice, interrupted by darting trout, so the song of 
the wren comes, goes, flashes, disappears, rises 
into bold prominence, is varied by sudden 
changes and whims, and then ripples off into 
silence. 

The teachers and preachers among men, who 
go about dispensing advice as to the way to 
avoid trouble, are well matched among birds by 
the vireos. The red-eyed vireo is merely prosy. 
His mild, tuneless platitudes soon become un- 
bearable. The yellow - throated and warbling 
vireos are more effective. They touch the heart 
by the purity and gentleness of their chiding. 
But the solitary vireo is needed to play the 7'ble 
of the revivalist. When he sees that arch fiend 
in feathers, an owl, anathema pervades the 
neighborhood, and the population is treated to 
the most effective kind of dogmatic declamation. 
The bluebird is, however, my favorite reformer. 
There is a gentleness, a sweet persuasiveness to 
her discourse, even when a crime-soaked owl is 
addressed, that is very conducive to neighborly 
living. 

It is not war-worn veterans who have counter- 
parts among the birds, but the gay soldiery of 



BIRD TRAITS. 215 

the parade ground. How impressive is the 
charge of the neatly uniformed cavahy, with 
colors flying, sabres flashing, and hoofs pound- 
ing on the cropped turf ! The men lose individ- 
ual life and move merely as part of the charging 
column. They are thrilled by the rush of air 
in their ears, and the glitter and flash of metal 
and color around them. So it is with the swal- 
lows and swifts charging through the summer 
sunshine and carrying dismay and death to the 
insect ranks before them. On a July evening I 
have seen four-score barn swallows with long 
slender forked tails, chestnut waistcoats and blue 
jackets appear with even ranks and uniform 
flight, sweep down upon the lake, skim its calm 
surface, and then, by some mysterious coincidence 
of will, wheel to right and upwards and soar far 
into the upper air, where sunlight still lingered 
upon Chocorua's summit. There is the same 
thrill, flash of color, presence of united determi- 
nation and losing of the individual in the charg- 
ing column, which are the special characteristics 
of cavalry. Late in August it is common to see 
great numbers of night hawks, gathering from a 
hundred pastures for migration, sail across the 
sky from west to east, with oj)en ranks and even 
flight. I once saw a flock of nearly fifty red- 
wing blackbirds, all males, in full breeding plum- 
age, rise at once from a meadow, fly north, wheel, 



216 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

fly west, wheel ag-aiii, careening so that the after- 
noon sunlight flashed on every scarlet epaulet, 
and then fly southward and downward into the 
grass. If they had been held equidistant by wires 
and guided by one mind, they could not have 
moved with any greater regularity. At the time, 
and since, they have reminded me of crack com- 
panies of infantry wheeling at the word of com- 
mand. I remember once, on a March morning, 
counting a flock of cedar birds, which alighted 
in an ash-tree by my window. They all faced 
in one direction, and numbered one hundred 
and forty. As I finished my count, it seemed 
as though every bird in the tree was moved by 
a single spring, for they went off so nearly to- 
gether that I was unable to note the slightest 
difference in their start. 

There are also birds which act the part of 
border pickets atid sentries. The tyrant flycatch- 
ers, especially the pugnacious and keen -eyed 
kingbirds, are noted for their readiness to warn 
their neighborhood of danger and to engage an 
intruder in single combat, no matter what his 
size or strength. 

I have named farming sparrows, artisan wood- 
peckers, preaching vireos, seafaring terns, music- 
loving thrushes, frivolous warblers, martial cedar 
birds, swallows, and blackbirds, and the criminal 
owls, crows, jays, and cowbirds. It would be 



BIRD TRAITS. 217 

easy to go on and compare the humming-bird to 
a French dancing-master, the whippoorwill to an 
auctioneer, the bittern and heron to a patient 
angler, the woodcock with his bill in the mud to 
a tippler with his straw in the cider, the bobo- 
link with his interminable and over-cheerful talk 
to a book agent or drummer. But these minor 
resemblances are less real and more whimsical. 
The ocean has really modified the character of 
the gulls and grebes, as it has the men and women 
who live upon it or near it. Life in the open 
field, pasture, and ploughed land has had a cer- 
tain clear and distinct influence upon the spar- 
rows and finches, just as it has had upon those 
who drive the harrow or sow the seed. But per- 
haps the clearest example of all of the influence 
of environment is afforded by the English spar- 
row, a bird which it is hardly necessary to say I 
did not have in mind when I wrote of his Ameri- 
can relatives. City-bred man without knowledge 
of lake and forest, mountain and ocean, is an 
inferior product of the race ; but disagreeable as 
he is, the city-bred bird is worse. The English 
sparrow stands to me as the feathered embodi- 
ment of those instincts and passions which be- 
long to the lowest class of foreign immigrants. 
The Chicago anarchist, the New York rough, 
the Boston pugilist can all be identified in his 
turbulent and dirty society. He is a bird of the 



218 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

city, ricli in city vices, expedients, and miseries. 
Tlie farmer's son who takes to drink and the 
East end makes a hard character. The sparrow 
who has taken to a similar form of existence is 
equally despicable. 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 

Eakly in tlie bright, still September morn- 
ing, as I lie hidden among the bushes which 
fringe the shores of my lonely lake in the birch 
wood, watching the mists moving over the sur- 
face of the water and rising to obscure the trees 
on the farther shore, I hear a sudden creaking 
of wings in the air, and see shadows passing 
swiftly across the water. Then there is a 
splash, the lake breaks into ripples, frogs give 
startled croaks, and the gray squirrels in the 
oaks cease frolicking, and hide themselves in the 
armpits of great limbs, waiting for fresh signs 
of danger. A fleet has been launched upon the 
lake, and, in proud array, it stands away across 
the mist-hung ripples. Six trim little craft in 
close order plough the deep. Why is it that I 
have to lie very still, as I watch this energetic 
squadron at its sunrise manoeuvres? Why can 
I not stand upon the sand and wave my friendly 
welcome to the beautifid wood ducks which 
have come to my lake ? I should love to call 
them to me, feed them, caress their exquisite 
plumage, and marvel at the play of color in 



220 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

their lustrous feathers ; but were I to move a 
hand so that their keen eyes saw it, or to snap a 
stick so that their keener ears heard it, their 
wings would pound the water into foam, and in 
one brief moment all their grace and beauty 
would have vanished from my sight. 

When the first snow falls upon the frozen 
November pastures, burying the dry grass and 
brown ferns, and leaving only the ghost-flowers 
of goldenrod, aster, and fireweed, fox-tracks are 
many upon the telltale carpet of winter. They 
begin upon the flanks of Chocorua, or away to 
the west among the boulders on Great Hill and 
Marston Hill, where the battle of the wolves 
was fought long ago, and come southward or 
eastward through birch wood and pasture, larch 
grove and swamp, to the lakeside and meadow. 
Many a mile every hungry son of Keynard 
travels over that first snow, searching for mice 
or a plump blue jay to pounce upon. If, as I 
lean upon a great gray boulder in the middle of 
the wide upland pasture, I see a slender, sharp- 
eared fox trotting towards me, can I whistle to 
him as to a dog, and tempt him to me by hold- 
ing up to him the mouse I have just taken from 
my trap ? With the speed of a thought he will 
dash from me towards yonder beech wood ; at 
its edge he will pause for one last look of hatred 
and terror, and then silence and the snow will 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 221 

seem to deny his ever having been within their 
dominion. Why does he shun me, when I have 
never harmed him, and would not have harmed 
him had he come to me ? 

If I steal ever so softly to the mossy bank of 
the meadow brook, and peep through the ferns 
into the deep pool overhung by the thick turf, 
the wary trout which lies poised in the cool cur- 
rent, with filmy fins pulsating, will see me, and 
seeing, strain every muscle of his marvelous 
form to hurl himself from me into some hidden 
grotto far down the stream. If a butterfly, 
opening and shutting its yellow wings on the 
milkweed flower, sees my shadow creeping to- 
wards it, the golden wings will move with vehe- 
ment power, and, high above me in the August 
sunlight the distrustful insect will linger, bid- 
ding me by its restless unhappiness depart from 
its milkweed. 

By night, as by day, the life of the forest, the 
field, and the water shuns me. The bat, which 
flits back and forth with crazy flight above the 
lake, avoids me ; the hare, leaping lazily through 
the grass where the moonlight sparkles in the 
dew, bounds from me, panic-stricken ; the owl, 
with silent wing, floats from me down the forest 
aisles, and hoots no more. What have I done 
that creation should spurn me as a leper, and 
that all which is most beautiful in animal life 



222 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

should hasten from me as from death? The 
answer is plain : my crime is that I am a man. 

There are hundreds of intelligent men and 
women in New England who do not know a 
bluebird from a blue jay, a chickadee from a 
junco, a catbird from a cow bunting. They 
know them all as birds, and love them as such, 
after a vague fashion, but of the racial or spe- 
cific characteristics of these charmins: creatures 
they know nothing. What, then, will they say 
to the avowal that not only do species of birds 
differ from one another, as Irishmen differ from 
Swedes, and Spaniards from Chinese, but that 
individual birds of the same species have, in 
proportion to the sum total of their character- 
istics, as much variation as individual men? 
Of course, there is not nearly the same chance 
for individuality in birds as in men, for their 
methods of life and their mental qualities are 
simple, while those of men are complex. 

To the wood ducks, the fox, the trout, and 
the butterfly I am merely a man, one of that 
horrible race of gigantic destroyers which occu- 
pies the land and the water, and, with merciless 
hand, traps, maims, or kills with indiscrimi- 
nate cruelty. For centuries, all that dwells 
within the woods or beside the waters has held 
firmly to life in direct proportion to its distrust 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 223 

of man and its ability to elude him. No wonder 
that, to the bird, a man is merely a man. The 
preponderance of evil in man's treatment of the 
lower animals makes it impossible for wood 
duck, fox, or trout to delay flight to determine 
whether the individual man who appears by the 
lake or in the pasture is impelled by kindness or 
by a desire to commit murder. 

Those who know birds only as birds, without 
separating them into races, species, or individu- 
als, have no such excuse to offer for their failure 
to distinguish and appreciate. They are not 
hunted to death by the fair creatures which peo- 
ple the wild world around them. They have 
ample time and more than ample provocation to 
learn something of these shy, sweet neighbors. 
No lifetime is long enough to learn all about 
even one bird ; but there are few men who do 
not sometimes pass beyond the limits of brick 
walls and cobblestone pavements, and whenever 
they do pass such limits the birds are with them. 
In our own Boston, gulls, crows, and several 
kinds of ducks are constantly present along the 
water's edge, between late autumn and spring. 
The Common and weed-grown vacant lots are 
not owned by house sparrows alone, conspicuous 
as those immigrants are. A Sunday afternoon 
in May spent in the groves and fields of the 
suburbs gives acquaintance with more species 



224 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

than there are hours in the day, and close watch 
for an hour of any one bird may yield a fact 
which no naturalist has ever recorded. 

I have a friend who lives alone, summer and 
winter, in a tiny hut amid the woods. The doc- 
tors told him that he must die, so he escaped 
from them to nature, made his peace with her, 
and regained his health. To the wild creatures 
of the pasture, the oak woods, and the swamps 
he is no longer a man, but a faun ; he is one of 
their own kind, shy, alert, silent. They, having 
learned to trust him, have come a little nearer 
to men. I once went to his hut when he was 
absent, and stretched myself in the sunlight 
by his tiny doorstep. Presently two chickadees 
came to a box of birdseed swinging from the 
pine limb overhead, and fed there, cracking the 
seeds one by one with their bills. Then, from 
the swamp, a pair of catbirds appeared, and fed 
upon crumbs scattered over the ground just at 
my feet ; a chipmunk ran back and forth past 
them, coming almost within reach of my hand; 
soon after a song sparrow drove away the cat- 
birds, and then sang a little sotto voce song to 
me before helping itself to the crumbs. When 
my friend returned, he told me the story of this 
song sparrow ; how he had Saved its life, and 
been rewarded by three years of gratitude, confi- 
dence, and affection on the part of the brave little 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 225 

bird. He seemed fearful lest I should think him 
over-imaginative in his recital, so he gave me de- 
tails about the sparrow and its ways which would 
have convinced a jury of the bird's identity and 
strong individuality. The secret of my friend's 
friendship with these birds was that, by living 
together, each had, by degrees, learned to know 
the other. A man had become the man, and in 
time he had developed into protector, provider, 
and companion. They, from being chickadees, 
catbirds, and song sj^arrow, had separated them- 
selves from their several species, and, by little 
habits and peculiarities of color, had made 
themselves plainly recognizable as individuals, 
having characteristics not common to all their 
species. 

It is easier to feel sure that these individual 
peculiarities of a bird are real if the bird is a 
captive, or if, as a wild bird, it is marked in 
some unmistakable way. My chief experience 
with birds of whose identity I could feel no 
doubt while watching them, hearing their voices, 
or seeing their pictures, has been with a number 
of owls which I have retained as captives for 
various terms of months or years. To a stran- 
ger, these birds would be quite indistinguishable 
both from one another and from wild birds of 
the same species. He would notice only the 
points of resemblance, the marks by which- he 



226 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

determined their species. I should notice only 
their points o£ difference ; and I should find 
among such points color, size, posture, gesture, 
expression, and manner. Not only would these 
points make it impossible for me to mistake one 
owl for another, but they would give me some 
passing impression as to the bird's temper at the 
moment ; for a placid, sleepy, well-fed owl is a 
very different bird from the same owl irritable, 
wide awake, and starving, after a three days' 
fast. 

We distinguish members of our family or of 
our circle of acquaintances one from another by 
the differences in their figures, features, and 
dress ; the motions they make, the sounds they 
utter ; their conduct, opinions, tempers, appe- 
tites, virtues, and failings. I distinguish my 
three barred owls from one another by slight 
differences in size, in coloration, attitude, mo- 
tions, notes, temper, appetite, and degrees of 
intelligence. They are not always in the same 
plumage ; their appetites vary ; they make dif- 
ferent sounds under different conditions ; and 
the one which is most docile in midwinter may, 
when moulting, be most irritable and prone to 
bite. One of them almost always whines when 
I approach his cage ; the other two never whine 
unless unusually hungry. One comes to me 
when I call him, provided he thinks he is to be 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 227 

fed ; the other two have never learned their 
names. One is a coward, and always seeks 
safety in swift escape when any danger threat- 
ens, while his original nest comj)anion is as 
brave as a lion. I once placed the latter in 
a small room with two hounds. The dogs ad- 
vanced towards the owl with faces expressive 
of great curiosity. The owl spread his broad 
wings, ruffled the feathers upon his back, 
snapped his beak, and then, as the dogs came 
nearer, darted at them, drove them under a sofa, 
and held them at bay until they were thankful 
to be allowed to slink out by a back door. No- 
thing would induce either dog to return to the 
room that day. 

These three barred owls were reared in the 
same nest, two in 1888, the third in 1891. They 
were all taken from the nest before they could 
fly, and they have been subjected to the same 
conditions while in captivity. So far as I know, 
they are of the same sex. In spite of these 
facts, they are no more alike than three dogs 
raised in the same kennels, three horses pas- 
tured in the same field, or three urchins starved 
and whipped in the same tenement house. They 
are not equally hungry, sleepy, or skillful in 
striking living game ; they are not equally fond 
of sunlight or darkness ; they select different 
perches, and look at life and their master in 



228 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY, 

three very different ways. In fact, tliey are in- 
dividuals, not three dittos to the name " barred 
owl." 

One summer I caught and caged three young 
sap-sucking woodpeckers, as they were prepar- 
ing to fly from their ancestral castle tower in 
the Chocorua forest. It might fairly be pre- 
sumed that three birds just out of the nest, and 
that nest a dark hole far up in a poplar trunk, 
would be as nearly alike as three dimes from 
the same mint. The opposite was true. Num- 
ber One was a hardy bird, which flew the mo- 
ment the axe was struck into the poplar's bole. 
Number Three was a weakling, that stayed in 
the hole until pulled out by hand. So it was 
later, as they grew older and larger. One was 
a bully, with a loud voice and too much animal 
spirits for the size of his cage. Another was 
quiet, meditative, and fond of a sunny corner of 
his box. In the autumn, when I let the birds 
out to frolic in a barn chamber, this quiet bird 
was always the last to quit his perch in favor of 
half-freedom. Number Three continued to be 
the smallest, weakest, and least hungry of the 
three birds ; but she was quicker than Number 
Two, and seemed to get more out of life than he 
did. From the hour when I took these little 
birds away from their nest, I never failed to 
recognize each of them as having individual 
characteristics not possessed by the others. 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 229 

The wild sap-sucking woodpeckers in the New 
Hampshire forests derive the chief of their diet 
from the sap of the common deciduous trees. 
Attacking the trees in April, often before the 
snow has wholly disappeared from the shady 
hollows and north sloj)es, they riddle the bark 
with dozens of small holes, from which the sap 
flows freely. Red squirrels, downy woodpeck- 
ers, and humming-birds like this flowing sap 
quite as well as do the sapsuckers, and they 
frequent the " orchards " more or less persist- 
ently. No stronger proof of individual differ- 
ences in bird character has come to my notice 
than that afforded by the opposite kinds of 
treatment accorded the pilfering humming-birds 
by various families of sapsuckers. At some 
orchards it is only necessary for a humming- 
bird to be heard approaching the trees for the 
woodpeckers to be on the watch, ready to drive 
the intruder away. Fierce attacks are made 
upon the little birds, and they are never per- 
mitted to drink at the sap holes if woodpeckers 
arc on guard. At other orchards the opposite 
is the rule, and a favorite humming-bird is 
allowed to drink when and where he pleases, 
provided he does not actually buzz in the face of 
his host, and attempt to sip from the cup in use. 
This difference in the treatment of the hummino-- 
birds is not a matter of daily whim, but is the 



230 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

rule throughout successive seasons. I say this 
after having, by close watch of certain orchards, 
convinced myself that not only the same wood- 
peckers, but the same humming-birds, return to 
particular groups of trees year after year. 

Once, on an August day, as I sat working at 
the north door of my big barn, near the foot of 
Chocorua, a small bird came hopping and flutter- 
ing towards me. As it drew near I saw that it 
was a young redstart, somewhat raggedly clad. 
The little creature was catching tiny flies and 
other insects, and seemed completely absorbed in 
its occupation, to the exclusion of fear or even 
ordinary caution. Presently it entered the barn, 
and hopped back and forth between the horse's 
heels, as he stood and stamped in his stall. Then 
it crossed the floor to me, and perched for a mo- 
ment on my foot. I caught it, and it sat upon 
my hand fearlessly, going because a passing fly 
drew it from me. Finally it continued its course 
through the south door into the wide sunshine 
beyond, and so away forever. Truly, that tiny 
redstart was unlike all others of its species which 
I have seen, or ever expect to see. Daft it may 
have been, but it did me more good than fifty 
sane warblers. 

Less clear evidence of individuality in birds 
comes in the way of every observer many times 
during each year. Spring after spring birds re- 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 231 

turn to favorite nesting-places, and autumn after 
autumn migrants appear on favorite hunting 
grounds : sometimes we feel sure that the robins 
which return to the apple-tree, the bluebirds to 
the box on the post, the orioles to the trailing 
elm branch, are the same birds which built in 
those spots in preceding summers ; but, as a rule, 
positive evidence to this effect is lacking, and 
our moral certainty is not capable of justification 
to others. Generally the fact which makes us 
most sure in our own minds that the birds in 
question are old friends is some hint of individ- 
uality on their part. They arrive on a fixed date 
in the spring, build their nest in a particular 
spot or in a particular way ; and the exactness 
of the coincidence induces us to believe in indi- 
viduality, rather than in the nature of all birds 
of a species to do precisely the same thing under 
similar circumstances. 

Where there is a wide variety in the nesting 
ways of a species, the ability to fix upon certain 
birds and feel confident of their identity is in- 
creased. For example, I have known the song 
sparrow to build upon the ground in the middle 
of a dry field, or close to a tussock of grass at a 
brookside ; a few inches from the ground, in a 
pile of brush in a meadow ; in a dark pocket in 
the hollow trunk of a willow ; two feet from the 
ground, in a spruce ; and finally, eight feet above 



232 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

the ground, in a cup-shaped hollow in a birch 
stump. It is evident that a species which varies 
the location of its home as widely as this must 
contain individuals which have their power of 
selection highly developed. The kingfisher's in- 
stinct takes him to a gravel bank, in the face of 
which he digs a hole. He is satisfied with one 
set of conditions, and those conditions are simple 
in kind. The song sparrow, which builds in a 
hollow willow, or in a depression in a high stump, 
has not been satisfied with simple conditions, but 
has exercised her power of selection to a remark- 
able degree in finally choosing very unusual sur- 
roundings for her home. 

Much as birds of a species resemble one an- 
other, every collecting ornithologist knows how 
rare it is to find two individuals whose colora- 
tion and measurements correspond exactly. In 
series containing hundreds of specimens of the 
same species, it is almost impossible to find two 
skins which agree so closely as to be indistin- 
guishable. Moreover, in such extended series, 
it is common to find specimens which vary in a 
radical way from the average. Not only does 
albinism occur, but other unusual features ap- 
pear in color and form in a way to suggest rever- 
sion to some earlier stage in the development of 
the species. For example, I have seen several 
specimens of the cedar bird which had white 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 233 

markings of a kind to suggest at once a common 
ancestor to both cedar bird and Bohemian wax- 
wing. Differentiation increased the white plum- 
age in the Bohemians, and allowed it to disap- 
pear in the cedar birds. 

So sharp are the distinguishing lines of color 
between desert races of birds and mammals and 
races living amid verdure that it is natural to 
surmise that habits and conduct may also be con- 
siderably modified by arid surroundings. Taken 
as a great group, birds which live upon the sea 
are certainly very different from typical forest 
birds. Sea birds' voices, when they use them, 
are harsh and shrill, and they can scarcely be 
said to have a suggestion of song in their vocal 
performances. Nearly all land birds have music 
in their natures. If they cannot sing, they at 
least try to play. The grouse, the woodpeckers, 
the snipe, the woodcock, the bittern, are all in- 
strumentalists. Land birds which sing, like the 
thrushes, the purple finch, fox sparrow, ruby- 
crowned kinglet, orchard oriole, water thrush, 
and other brilliant performers, are well known 
to vary in the individual success of their' efforts. 
Now and then I hear a song sparrow or a hermit 
thrush which sings so much better than its fel- 
lows that I return to it day after day, to listen 
to it as to a Nilsson or a Scalchi. 

If I, with dull human ears, can detect the dif- 



234 FRO^r blomidox to smoky. 

ferences in birds' songs, how iniicli more quickly 
can the birds themselves distinguish one an- 
other's voices ! Watch a nestf ul of fledgelings 
whose eyes are incapable of distinct sight, and 
one of the first facts to be noted will be the sud- 
den excitement of the young when the parent 
bird, in returning, comes within a few rods of 
the nest. The clamor of the vouno; can be in- 
stantly silenced by a note of alarm from the par- 
ent, while no other sound in the neighborhood 
will check their glad uproar. Among full-grown 
birds, similar notes of warning are wonderfully 
effective. Crows chortling together in the woods 
will be quieted and called to wing by a single 
hoarse " caw* " from their sentinel. A flock of 
blue jays, feeding in the oaks, w^ill scatter like 
leaves in the wind at hearing a cry of alarm from 
one of their number. I never see or hear a crow^ 
" caucus " without feeling sure that certain indi- 
viduals have more weight in the assembly than 
others, and that their cawdng means something to 
their fellows. Of course, these indications of the 
appreciation of individualit}^ by some birds in 
dealing with their mates are vague and unsatis- 
factory as compared with the more direct evi- 
dence afforded hj personall}^ watching captive 
birds until their characters are thoroughly 
learned. 

Two great-horned owls which I owned for a 



INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS. 235 

few months were so radically different in temper 
that every one who came near them recognized 
the fact. One was quiet, dignified, and compar- 
atively tractable ; the other was belligerent, cross, 
and untamable. To my eyes, the expressions of 
their faces were as different as they would have 
been in two persons of opi)osite temperaments. 
That this difference in bird faces is real, and not 
based upon the circumstances of the moment, ac- 
cidents of position and color, or my own state of 
mind, seems to me to be established by the fact 
that, in a series of photographs of my barred 
owls, taken at different periods, the identity of 
each owl in a picture is as evident to me, and to 
others who know the birds intimately, as though 
they were men and women instead of birds. 

With me, belief in the individuality of birds 
is a powerful influence against their destruction. 
Like most men familiar with out of door life, I 
have the hunting instinct strongly developed. 
If a game bird is merely one of an abundant 
species, killing it is only reducing the supply of 
that species by one ; if, on the contrary, it is pos- 
sessed of novel powers, or a unique combination 
of powers, and can be distinguished from all its 
fellows, killing it is destroying something which 
cannot be replaced. No one with a conscience 
would extinguish a species, yet I already feel to- 
wards certain races that their individuals are as 



236 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

diifferent from one another as I formerly sup- 
posed one species of bird to be from another. 
At one time I should have shot a barred owl 
without a twinge of conscience ; now I should 
as soon shoot my neighbor's Skye terrier as kill 
one of these singularly attractive birds. 

Sentiment aside, bird individuality, if real, 
is of deep scientific interest. If we knew more 
of the influence of individuals, we might have a 
clearer perception of the forces governing evolu- 
tion. Serious science is now so fully given up 
to laboratory as distinguished from field study 
that but little thought is given to problems of 
this kind. This fact makes it all the more pos- 
sible for amateurs to work happily in the woods 
and fields, encouraged by the belief that they 
have innumerable discoveries still to make, 
countless secrets of nature still to fathom. 



BIRDS AT YULE-TIDE. 
I. 

SUNLIGHT. 

At the northern end of the wren orchard there 
is an angle in the stone wall where the autumn 
winds pile dry leaves. The wall at this point is 
five feet high and very thick, and no breeze 
finds a way through it. Above and behind the 
wall a dozen or more ancient white pines rise 
high into the air, cutting off all view of the 
northern sky ; but southward the orchard falls 
away in grassy terraces, and through the vistas 
between the old gray trunks and tangled branches 
far glimpses of Cambridge and the Charles 
River meadows greet the eye. Christmas, 1892, 
had come and gone, but New Year's Day was 
still in the future. There were snow banks in 
the shadows, and back of the wall, under the 
pines, the north wind bustled about on winter 
errands. Weary with a long walk, I had sunk 
deep into the dry leaves on the sunny side of the 
wall, and had found them warm and comforting. 
The sun's rays had brought heat, and the brown 
leaves had taken it and kept it safely in their 
dry depths. 



238 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

At first, as I lay there, the world seemed life- 
less, so utterly silent was it. No insect's wing 
gleamed in the sunlight, no squirrel ran on the 
wall, no bird spoke in the treetops. There are 
wonderfully still moments in midsummer, when 
the breeze dies away, the sun's rays glow like 
fire in the lake, and the birds sit motionless 
and drowsy in the thickets. In those moments, 
however, the watchful eye can always see the 
dragon-fly darting back and forth over the water, 
the inch-worm reaching out its aimless and in- 
quiring arm from the tip of a grass stalk, or the 
ant marching back and forth with endless pa- 
tience under the stubble forests. Still and seem- 
ingly dead as was this winter morning, I had 
faith that if I listened attentively enough some 
voice would come to me out of the silence ; and 
sure enough, as soon as my presence was forgot- 
ten, two or three golden-crested kinglets began 
lisping to each other in the nearest cedars. 
Soon they came into view, hovering, fluttering, 
clinging, among the evergreen branches ; some- 
times head downwards, often sideways, always 
busy clearing the foliage of its insect dwellers. 

While I was watching these tiny workers, now 
and then catching a glimpse of their bright yel- 
low crown-patches, I saw a much larger bird 
alight in a leafless ash-tree about fifty feet from 
me, near the orchard wall. The next moment 



BIRDS AT YULE-TIDE 239 

the harsh cry of a jay came through the still air, 
and as I brought my glass to bear on the visitor 
I expected to recognize the gay plumage of the 
crow's festive cousin. The bird in focus was 
no jay : that was clear at first glance. It was 
shorter than a blue jay by two inches or more ; 
it was not blue, and its head was not crested. 
Presently another bird of the same species joined 
the first comer, and the two sat quietly in the 
bare tree, doing nothing. Far away a flicker 
called, and then in the pines the clear phoe-he of 
the titmouse came like a whiff of perfume. One 
of the strange birds dropped suddenly to the foot 
of the tree, and began moving over a broad snow 
bank which lay in the shadow cast by the wall 
and a bunch of privet and barberry. The snow 
was sprinkled with the winged seeds of the ash, 
and the bird picked these up one by one, neatly 
freed each seed from its membrane, and swal- 
lowed it. 

While the bird remained in shadow she looked 
gray ; but whenever the sunlight struck her, rich 
olive tones glowed upon her head, back, and 
rump, while traces of the same coloring showed 
upon her breast. Beautiful water - markings 
rippled from her neck downward over her back. 
Her wings were dark ashy gray marked by two 
white wing bars and white edgings to the stiff 
feathers, and under each eye a white line was 



240 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

noticeable. Her feet showed black against the 
snow, in which they moved regardless of cold or 
dampness. The bird in the tree was not favor- 
ably placed for me to see his colors, so, rising 
softly from my leaf -bed, I moved silently towards 
him until he came against a dark background. 
Slowly raising my glass, I leveled it upon him, 
and brought out to my admiring eyes the exquis- 
ite tints of his plumage. Where his mate had 
glowed with olive, he blushed with rosy carmine. 
Head, nape, rump, throat, and breast alike were 
suffused with warm, lustrous color. Here and 
there, white, gray, and ash struggled for a share 
in his dress, but the carmine outshone them. 
There could be no doubt as to the birds' iden- 
tity,' — they were a pair of pine grosbeaks. 

My approach to a point not more than twenty 
feet from the feeding bird did not disturb her. 
She watched me closely, but continued to gather 
the ash seeds. At times she even ran towards 
me a foot or two. Suddenly a dark shadow 
crossed the snowdrift, and both birds started 
apprehensively, as though to fly away ; but they 
quickly regained their composure as a ragged- 
winged crow sailed close above the treetops and 
disappeared behind the hill. A nearer approach 
to the birds showed me how massive were their 
bills ; the upper strongly arched mandible form- 
ing a sharp hook far overhanging the blunter 



BIRDS AT YULE-TIDE. 241 

under one. Their tails, too, were noticeable, 
being plainly and quite deeply forked. 

Advancing step by step, I came at last so 
near these confiding birds that, had they been 
domestic fowls, they would have avoided me. 
The one on the ground flew into the ash-tree, 
and both moved a little higher among the 
branches as I walked directly beneath them. 
Of nervous fear they gave no sign, although 
both uttered short musical notes in a querulous 
tone. This trustfulness is characteristic of many 
of the migrants from the far north which sud- 
denly, and for causes not yet fully understood, 
sweep over fields and forest, in midwinter. 
Many a time I have stood beneath a slender 
white birch in whose branches dozens of pine 
siskins were resting, or redpoll linnets feeding. 
I have leaned over the upper rail of a fence and 
looked down upon red crossbills eating salt and 
grain from a cattle trough on the ground on the 
other side of the fence, while they watched me 
with their bright eyes, yet did not fly. Chick- 
adees and Hudson Bay titmice have chided me 
while they perched upon twigs, only a foot or 
two from my head; and nuthatches, kinglets, 
purple finches, goldfinches, and snow buntings 
have in a less noticeable way shown far less fear 
of me than any summer migrant or resident bird 
would display. 



242 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

II. 

MOONLIGHT. 

Sunset in late December comes long before 
tea time, so I lingered in the wren orchard 
while the orange light came and went in the 
west, and until the big yellow moon swung free 
from the eastern elms, and began her voyage 
across the chilly sky. I had been worrying the 
crows at their roost in a grove of pitch pines 
on the very crest of the Arlington ridge. Just 
as they skulked into the grove on one side, I 
glided in from the other. Silently they floated 
through the twilight, and gained a thickly 
branching pine. In its upper foliage they 
crowded together and prepared for sleep. Then 
they heard my footsteps on the twigs and snow 
crust below, and suddenly a great stirring, and 
rubbing of wings and twigs told of their flight. 
At first they said nothing, but when they had 
reached the upper air they circled over the grove 
cawing spitefully. A small flock of pine gros- 
beaks dropped into the grove, and after the 
brightest of the golden light had faded from be- 
hind far Wachusett I heard a small troop of 
kinglets come in for their night's lodging. The 
crows came back to their favorite tree, and when 
I disturbed them a second time nine of them 
flew away full of wrath. 



BIRDS AT YULE-TIDE. 243 

Leaving the pines to darkness and its birds, 
I came back to the wren orchard. As I ran 
through a savin-dotted pasture, a lonely junco 
flew from beneath a juniper bush, and alighted 
upon the ground. I stopped and watched him. 
For a while he kept very still, but at last he 
showed his white tail feathers in flight, and van- 
ished among the cedars. Under the cedars I 
found a dead bird, lying on its back upon the 
snow. It was a grosbeak, with almost every 
feather, except those on the breast, intact ; yet, 
strange to say, its body had been eaten, — prob- 
ably by mice, for no creature less tiny could 
have removed the flesh so completely without 
injuring the plumage. I fear the trustfulness 
of this gentle migrant caused its death. Mice 
can eat birds, but they cannot shoot them first. 

The apple-trees in the wren orchard seemed 
even more grotesquely gnarled as they lifted 
their distorted limbs against the moonlit sky 
than they had in the pale winter sunshine. 
They are very old trees for fruit trees, and 
many a dark cavern in their trunks and larger 
limbs offers shelter to owls, squirrels, and mice. 
Leaning against one of their broad trunks, I im- 
itated the attenuated squeak made by a mouse. 
Again and again I drew breath through my 
tightly closed and puckered lips, feeling sure 
that if Scops and his appetite were in ^com- 



244 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

pany anywhere within an owl's ear-shot of my 
squeaking, I should hear from the little mouser. 

Once, twice, perhaps three times, there fell 
upon my ear what seemed like the distant wail- 
ing of a child or the faint whinnying of a horse. 
All at once it came over me that the sound was 
not distant, and I held my breath and listened 
intently. It came again — faint, tremulous, sad. 
My ears declined to say whether it came fifty 
feet or a quarter of a mile. I stole softly to- 
wards the point from which it proceeded, but 
before I had gone a rod I heard the same or 
a similar sound on my left. This time it was 
more distinct, and I knew it to be the quaver- 
ing whinny of a screech owl. Stooping to the 
ground, I scanned the apple-trees with the white 
sky for a background. In the third tree from 
me I saw a dark lump on a branch. I crept 
towards it, and at the first sound I made, the 
bunch resolved itself into a broad-winged little 
owl, which flew across to the next tree. Rising, 
I walked straight towards it, until I stood close 
beneath the bird, who watched me without mov- 
ing. 

Although I could see only his silhouette, I 
knew well what his expression was like, having 
had several of his family as pets. His feathery 
ear-tufts were depressed, and his head was set 
down closely upon his shoulders. Could I have 



BIRDS AT YULE-TIDE. 245 

seen his face, I should have met an impish glare 
in his small yellow eyes, and a look about his 
mouth suggestive of sharp bites. The screech 
owl fears the barred owl as much as a robin 
does ; so when I hooted like his big cousin, and 
spun my hat into the air over him, he flew down 
almost to the ground, made a sharp angle, and 
rose into a tree at a little distance. After I had 
followed him from tree to tree for several min- 
utes, he finally succeeded in dodging me, and I 
left the orchard to the quiet of the winter's 
night. 

In the morning, when I rolled into the pile 
of leaves by the sunny side of the wall, the day 
seemed bereft of incident and color ; but as I 
ran down the frozen hillside, hurrying more to 
regain warmth than to gain time, the day ap- 
peared, in retrospect, to be well filled with inci- 
dent and life. Not only had there been crows, 
jays, flickers, chickadees, kinglets, and a junco 
busy about their respective tasks of food-finding, 
but the charming pine grosbeaks had gathered 
the ash seeds from the snow, a few feet from 
where, as soon as moonlight replaced sunshine. 
Scops set himself to gather his nightly harvest 
of mice. Vegetation, as a rule, is dormant in 
winter ; most of the insect world selects winter 
for its period of repose and transformation ; 
snow, ice, and lack of food drive certain birds 



246 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

into migration, and cause reptiles and a few spe- 
cies of mammals to hibernate. Beyond these 
limits Nature keeps on her way untroubled ; and 
even within these limits there is less stagnation 
than most men suppose. If man were not him- 
self so much in dread of the snow, he would 
not credit the lower animals with undue fear of 
wintry elements. 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 

Lying flat upon my back on my bedroom 
floor, with my head in the fireplace, pillowed 
upon the andirons, and my gaze directed in- 
tently up the chimney, I watched, hour by hour, 
the strange domestic doings of two of my tenants. 
The fireplace was so arranged, and its opening 
into the chimney so shaped, that I could see 
much of that part of the interior of the chimney 
which rose above me, leading toward the little 
patch of blue sky far away. The whole of the 
west wall of the black flue and a little more 
than half of both the north and south walls were 
visible to me. The surface of these walls was 
rough, having been daubed with mortar which 
formed undulations and ridges. The lower faces 
of these irregularities were soft, dull black, but 
the parts inclined toward the sky caught the 
glare of light from above and shone as though 
ebonized. About eight feet above me, as I lay 
in the second-story fireplace, something about 
the size of half a small saucer projected like a 
tree fungus from the northern wall of the flue. 
Its edges gleamed like silvery gelatin, and light 



248 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

shone tlirougli its fabric in many places. This 
fabric seemed to be made of dozens of small 
twigs matted and woven together in semi-saucer 
form, and held firmly in place by some translu- 
cent, gelatinous substance of a yellowish-white 
color. Masses of the same substance held the 
shallow nest in its place against the hard, cold 
wall of brick and mortar. Protruding from the 
nest were the long and slender wings of a bird, 
which was sitting snugly upon the structure, 
with her face turned directly to the bricks. 
The tapering wings crossed near the body, and 
their tips spread like a Y, under which a short, 
stiff, fan-shaped tail extended for a part of the 
distance covered by the wings. These stiff tail 
feathers, kept spread all the time, terminated iu 
sharp spines, readily discernible. Occasionally, 
as I watched, the sitting bird wriggled on her 
nest, and her wings moved restlessly. 

Suddenly the column of air in the chimney 
was thrown into vibration, and a dull booming 
sound resulted. Something darkened the open- 
ing of the shaft, the interrupted light trembled 
in a confusing way ; I was strongly inclined to 
get out from under, and found it impossible to 
avoid closing my eyes. Simultaneously with 
these disturbing events, a bird's voice in the 
chimney produced a series of rapid whistling or 
peeping notes, so mingled as to render the hearer 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 249 

uncertain as to the number of birds making 
them. A second bird had entered the chimney. 
Seen from outside, he had dropped into it, and, 
watched by perturbed vision from below, he had 
come down backward, hovering and fluttering 
until, head toward the light, his tiny feet had 
caught in the mortar, and every spine in his very 
brief tail had been braced against the same 
rough substance. Perfectly motionless, he clung 
to the black wall as a tree toad sticks to a tree 
trunk. His flat head, tiny beak, sooty brown 
coat, shining in the glare from the sky, did not 
combine well into a bird ; in fact, nothing in 
their weird surroundings made these tenants 
seem akin to birds. They were more like bats. 
Outside, the hot sunlight and hazy blue sky of 
early July hung over wood and meadow, lake 
and distant mountain. Butterflies fluttered and 
drifted in aimless flight over the sumacs, a hum- 
ming bird buzzed in the deep blue larkspur flow- 
ers, barn swallows cut fanciful curves over the 
lake and back to their nest with its nestlings ; 
while down in the shadowy fern land the veery's 
tremulous music told of coolness and comfort. 
How different this soot-lined tube of brick, lead- 
ing down through ever-darkening gloom into an 
unknown abyss of blackness and silence ! How 
strange that this keen-eyed swift, which a mo- 
ment ago was speeding through highest ether: at 



250 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

a rate wliicli no other bird can equal and main- 
tain, should come back into this pit and call it 
his home ! He spoke again, and once more the 
heavy air of the chimney responded to his whir- 
ring wings as he dropped a little lower to the 
level of the nest and turned his bright eyes 
inquiringly toward his mate. Her wings now 
moved, and she lifted herself away from the 
frail platform of glued twigs and stuck against 
the bricks a few feet distant. The male, raising 
his wings and keeping them moving, walked fly- 
like to the nest and settled upon it. Instead of 
facing directly toward the north wall, he sat 
upon the nest at a different angle, so that his 
forked win^ projected obliquely from the nest's 
edge. A moment later the female made the air 
throb and boom to her powerful flight as she 
flew toward and into the light. 

Twenty minutes passed ; the bird on the nest 
was restless, and squirmed in a way which sug- 
gested physical discomfort. Then he gave a low 
call ; and a moment later darkness, hurried 
notes, and the fluttering of strong wings an- 
nounced the mother-bird's return. She dropped 
down backward until close beside the nest, struck 
and clung to the bricks, and then, using her feet 
almost as well as though on level ground, gained 
the nest and pushed her way upon it, fairly for- 
cing off her mate, who seemed to have no incli- 



UP TUE CHIMNEY. 251 

nation to depart. Finally he moved, and, after a 
series of short upward flights, regained the sun- 
light, and was seen no more for three quarters 
of an hour. As the female settled herself upon 
the nest a faint " cheeping " suggested that tiny- 
life was stirring beneath her breast. Her posi- 
tion was the same which she took in the first in- 
stance, her face being turned so directly toward 
the north wall that her tail projected at right 
angles from the nest. After seeing half a dozen 
exchanges in position made by the birds, I was 
satisfied that one parent, which I called the 
female, always sat straight upon the nest, and 
the other, which for the sake of distinguishing 
them I called the male, always sat obliquely. 

To see only the bottom of the nest, yet to 
know that within it lay young swifts which were 
being fed in some way by their parents, was tan- 
talizing. I recalled a former year, when I wished 
to secure a swift's nest with its full set of eggs, 
and so had kept watch of the nest ; not by climb- 
ing to the chimney top and peering down, but by 
raising a small mirror, by whose aid I had seen 
the reflected nest from below. The mirror served 
its purpose a second time. I lashed it to the tip 
of a fishing rod and pushed the slender joint up 
the chimney, adding first the middle joint and 
then the but in order to bring the glass well 
above the nest. Something white was in the 



252 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

nest — just what, I could not at first tell, for 
mortar dust liad fallen into my eyes, and it was 
difficult to keep tlie glass still enough to see with 
my eyes blinking and weeping. The mother-bird 
had been driven from the nest by the appearance 
of the strange, misshapen thing which I had 
forced toward her from below, and she was now 
making short flights back and forth in the upper 
part of the chimney, producing sounds and sud-. 
den variations in light and darkness which would 
surely have frightened away any but a human 
intruder. Wiping my eyes and steadying the 
glass, I took a careful look at the contents of 
the nest. The white object, or at all events its 
whitest part, was an eggshell from whose opened 
halves a young bird was feebly trying to escape. 
Without waiting to see more, I withdrew the 
mirror from the chimney and removed all dis- 
turbing objects, myself included, from the fire- 
place. My heart reproached me. Had my 
violence driven the birds from their nest, thus 
making probable the death of the young at this 
trying crisis in their career ? More than fifteen 
minutes passed before booming wings in the 
swift's gruesome nursery assured me that a par- 
ent had returned. 

These events happened on Monday, and not 
until the following Saturday did I again intrude 
upon my batlike neighbors. Meanwhile I was 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 253 

not unaware of their near presence, for at all 
hours of the day and night the thunder of their 
wino-s and their hioh-pitched voices invaded my 
room. After exchanging places at intervals of 
from fifteen to forty-five minutes all day long, it 
seemed to my human intelligence that they might 
keep still at night. But no, during evening twi- 
light, and at ten, twelve, one, and three o'clock, 
and then with tenfold energy between dawn and 
six in the morning, they came and went, went 
and came, with apparently sleepless energy. The 
nights were clear and dry, and in the sky or over 
the white surface of the lake insects were prob- 
ably easily seen at any hour by birds accustomed 
to such gloom as that of my chimney. Still it 
was wonderful to think of their strength and pa- 
tience, and of their knowledge of place. Many 
if not most of us poor mortals lose our paths 
under the simplest conditions, even with the sun 
smiling down upon us, or the stars writing their 
ancient guideboards anew for us in the dark 
heavens, toward which we will not turn for aid. 
These swifts, however, seem to plough through 
darkness or light with equal confidence, cleaving 
the cool wind at the rate of more than a mile a 
minute, seeing first the pale lake below their 
chimney's shadow, then the vast peak of Choco- 
rua, framed in its sombre spruces, and again 
some far range of untrodden mountains where 



254 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

fellow swifts still nest in hollow tree trunks after 
the ancient practice of their family. What mar- 
velous sense is it which brings them back by day 
or by night, in sunlight or in storm, straight as 
thought itself, to home and rest ? 

I never have met a man who remembered 
having seen a swift perch. It was formerly sup- 
posed that they had no feet, and some people 
still believe the fable. In building-time the birds 
come spinning through the air like projectiles, 
and while flying thus snap small terminal twigs 
from sycamores and other brittle trees, and carry 
them back to their chimneys, to be painstakingly 
glued into their fragile nests. After seeing my 
swifts use their feet so readily in getting to and 
from their nest, I shall not be much surprised 
some day to see a swift alight upon some conven- 
ient perch outside his chimney. Nevertheless, 
so far as is now known, the swifts take no rest 
even after flying many miles with incredible 
speed, until their accustomed shelter is regained. 

When Saturday came, I felt that it was time 
to see more of my noisy tenants. In the inter- 
vening days something which looked like a happy 
thought had come to me. Why should I lie 
supine among the fire irons gazing up the black 
chimney hole, when, by judicious use of a few 
mirrors, I could bring the swifts and their cavern 
within range of my writing table ? Saturday 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 255 

morning the small mirror climbed tlie* flue a sec- 
ond time and was firmly lashed in i3osition a few 
inches above the nest. The lashing, of course, 
was applied to the but of the fishing rod at the 
point where it rested in the fireplace among and- 
irons and tongs. Then a narrow, old-fashioned 
mirror, in which somebody's great-grandmother 
may have admired her pretty face in the days of 
a long-forgotten honeymoon, was gently rested 
upon the single stick of wood at the back of the 
fireplace so that its face inclined slightly toward 
me. Wonderful ! — there were the shiny flue, 
the nest, the frightened bird perching far up the 
shaft, and the narrow line of sky above her; 
and there also was the small glass at the tip of 
my fishing rod, and in its oval face was an image 
of the inside of the shallow nest with two fat, 
featherless, sightless swifts flopping about in it. 
Nothing could now be easier than to watch the 
entire process of rearing the infant projectiles 
from a state of feebleness and imbecility to that 
marvelous condition of grace, speed, and intelli- 
gence at which, in the natural course of events, 
they would arrive in a few brief days. 

My first desire was to ascertain how they 
were fed. The barn swallows, who by some 
freak have taken possession of a pewee's nest 
just under the eaves of my cottage, feed their 
young with insects which they bring bristling in 



256 FROM BLOMIBON TO SMOKY. 

their beaks. I had expected to see the swifts 
bring insects to their babies, but my closest 
scrutiny failed to discover anything in their 
beaks when they arrived, or when they went 
upon the nest. Under the new conditions, I 
watched with double care and attention. At 
first, for nearly an hour, the birds were too 
much disturbed by the glass and fishing rod to 
settle upon the nest. They came close to it 
and chattered, but flew nervously and noisily, as 
though to frighten away the intruder. After a 
while they grew quieter, and finally one arrived 
with food. She came to the nest, mounted 
its edge, and leaned toward the open-mouthed 
young. Then she moved violently, and seemed 
to hang over the infants, to pound them, shake 
them, and push them back and forth in a sin- 
gularly rough and unkind way. Seeing all these 
things by double reflection and in the dim light 
of the chimney, I could not be certain of details, 
but all that I saw reminded me of descriptions I 
had heard and read of feeding young birds by 
regurgitation, while nothing that went on looked 
like the quiet and matter-of-fact process of drop- 
ping a fly into a little bird's gaping mouth. It 
seemed to me that the parent inserted her bill 
in the young one's throat, and then presumably 
pumped into it, by the violent motions which 
she made, a portion of the food previously swal- 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 257 

lowed by her. After being fed, tbe young 
dropped back limp or satisfied into the nest, 
and were promptly sat upon and hustled into 
a comfortable and orderly condition. Appar- 
ently both birds joined in feeding their offspring, 
for I saw first one and then the other go through 
this peculiar process. 

Supposing that I should have ample opportu- 
nity for several days to watch the feeding, I did 
not devote myself to its study as faithfully as I 
should have done, had I foreseen the distressing 
event which was in store for my tenants. On Sat- 
urday afternoon a light rain fell. The faithful 
mother sat upon her nest while multitudes of 
tiny drops floated down the chimney. They did 
not fall, but seemed to sail unwillingly through 
the gloom, held aloft by the ascending currents 
of air. Each globule shone with light, and 
looked almost as white as a snowflake. As they 
approached the nest, few seemed to touch it, but 
curved away from it in some eddy of the air, 
and settled down into the depths of darkness 
below. During the rain both birds remained in 
the chimney most of the time. Sunday, July 
16th, proved to be an unusually warm day, and, 
what was perhaps of more moment to the swifts, 
a very dry day, there seeming to be no moisture 
left in air or vegetation. About noon, while 
writing at my table, I heard the familiar boom- 



258 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

ing, whistling, and chirping in tlie chimney, and 
as I glanced up I saw that one of the birds was 
coming to the nest and the other just going off 
up chimney. Suddenly there was a grating 
sound, a sharp outcry, more booming and flut- 
tering, and I jumped to my feet and knelt before 
the glass to gain a closer view of the chimney. 
The nest had vanished. Only a tiny piece of 
glue adhered to the slight curve in the bricks 
under which the nest had been attached. The 
parent bird, with rufEed plumage and rapidly 
moving head, clung near the spot where her 
home had been, and seemed to me to be looking 
with terror far down into that horrible abyss 
where her young had fallen, and from which 
they sent back no cry. Taking down the jointed 
rod, I used the small mirror to search every part 
of the great chimney cavern which could be 
reached, but in vain. The nest had gone straight 
down without touching any fireplace, and had 
been lost forever in the debris and stifling dust 
at the bottom of the shaft. 

During the remainder of the day the birds 
fluttered back and forth and lamented. They did 
not go more than two or three inches below the 
spot where the ill-fated nest had been. At in- 
tervals during the night I heard them moving in 
the chimney, but on Monday they stayed away 
most of the time, even during a heavy shower 



UP THE CHIMNEY. 259 

which fell late in the afternoon. Toward even- 
ing I saw both of them perched near the site of 
their fallen home, and during that night and on 
other days and nights the sound of their wings 
occasionally came to me as a reminder of their 
vanished happiness. They made no effort to re- 
build in my chimney, yet their presence in it 
seemed to show that they had not begun house- 
keeping elsewhere. I doubt not that another 
summer that love of home which is so closely 
connected with birds' ability to find a familiar 
spot by day or by night, even after months of 
absence, will bring my swifts back to their old 
flue. 



THE HUMMING-BIEDS OF CHOCORUA. 

While snow still sparkles in the frost furrows 
on Cliocorua's peak, the first ruby-throats appear 
in the warm meadows and forest glades at the 
south of the mountain. They love the flowers as 
others of their race love them, and when apple 
blossoms bless the air with perfume and visions 
of lovely color and form, the humming-birds revel 
in the orchards of the North as their brothers 
delight in the rich flowers of the tropics. It is 
not, however, among flowers that the Chocorua 
ruby-throats are happiest or most frequently 
seen. Were some one to ask me to find a hum- 
ming-bird quickly, it would make no difference 
what the age of the summer or what the hour of 
the day, I should turn my steps toward the for- 
est, feeling certain that at the drinking fountains 
of the yellow-breasted woodpecker, the red-capped 
tapster, and loud-voiced toper of the birch wood, 
I should find the ruby-throats sipping their fa- 
vorite drink. 

About the middle of April, and again nearly 
six months later, a mischievous and wary wood- 
pecker migrates north and south across New" 



THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 261 

England. The casual observer might take him 
to be a demure little downy, intent upon keeping 
the orchard free from insects, and, if the sly 
migrant was ordinarily quick in placing a tree 
trunk between his black and white body and 
the observer, his identity would not be detected. 
On April 17, 1892, I noticed one of these birds 
clinging to a smooth spot on the trunk of a shag- 
bark which grew on a warm pasture hillside in 
sight of Bunker Hill and the golden dome of the 
Massachusetts State House. Watching him care- 
fully for a moment, I saw that he was a yellow- 
breasted or sap-sucking woodpecker, perhaps one 
of my own Chocorua neighbors, and that he was 
quietly sipping the sweet sap of the shagbark 
which was flowing from several small holes in 
the bark, drilled, no doubt, that very morning 
by the traveler so serenely occupied. 

The sapsuckers reach northern New Hamp- 
shire before the snow has wholly melted in the 
woods. I have seen them at Chocorua, on May 
1st, at work upon trees which they had evidently 
been tapping for fully a week. From this time 
until the last of September, perhaps even till the 
7th or 8th of October, they spend the greater 
part of their time drilling small holes in the 
bark of their favorite trees and in sipping from 
the sap fountains thus opened the life blood of 
the doomed trees. They do not range about 



262 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

through the forest tapping one tree here and 
another there, but they select one, two, perhaps 
three groups of trees well lighted and warmed by 
the sun, and make sap orchards of them, cling- 
ing to them many hours at a time, week after 
week, and returning to them, or others close at 
hand, year after year. 

Within a mile of my cottage at the foot of 
Chocorua there are half a dozen of these drink- 
ing places of the yellow-breasted woodpeckers, 
and each one of them is a focus for ruby-throats. 
The one which I have known longest I discov- 
ered in 1887. It consists of a group of gray 
birches, springing from a single stump and ex- 
panding into fifteen distinct trunks. When I 
first saw it all the trees were living, and nearly 
all of them were yielding sap from the girdles 
of small drills which the woodpeckers had made 
in the trunks, about nine feet from the ground. 
In July, 1893, all but three of the trees were 
dead, and of the dead trunks all except two had 
been broken off by the wind at a point a few 
inches below the drills. The surviving trees had 
been tapped, and were in use by both sapsuckers 
and humming-birds. During 1890, 1891, and 
1892, the humming - bird in attendance at this 
orchard was a male of noticeably strong charac- 
ter. There was no mistaking him for any chance 
visitor at the place. He spent all his time there, 



THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 263 

and repelled intruders with great vigor, flying 
violently at them, squeaking, humming as noisily 
as a swarm of bees, and returning to his favorite 
perch as soon as they had been put to flight. He 
often attacked the sapsuckers themselves, buzzed 
in their faces, and seemed little abashed when 
they turned upon him, as they sometimes did, 
and drove him from their midst. He also had a 
habit of squeaking spitefully when he was drink- 
ing from the sap-wells, especially on his return 
from a bout with some other humming-bird. 
Searching for him in July, 1893, 1 failed to find 
him, but discovered that in his place a pair of 
birds seemed to have established themselves. Of 
course it is possible that my friend of previous 
years may have taken to himseK a wife and have 
become mild-mannered in consequence, but I find 
it impossible to believe in this theory, so pro- 
nounced were the old male's temper and peculiar 
ways. The new male, for example, did not use 
the same twigs for perches, and he did not keep 
his head wagging from side to side as the old one 
did with a vigor and regularity which nothing 
but a pendulum ever equaled. 

The new male, however, showed me a perform- 
ance far more interesting in character than any 
of his petulant predecessor's, and one which es- 
tablishes the Chocorua ruby-throat as a musician 
and a dancer. One day, while this male -was 



264 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

drinking at tlie sap fountains, a female arrived. 
The male greeted her with squeaks and intense 
humming. She alighted on the tree near the 
drills, and the male then hurled himself through 
the air with amazing speed, describing a curve 
such as would be drawn by a violently swung 
pendulum attached to a cord fifteen or eighteen 
feet long. The female was at the lowest point of 
the arc described by her vehement admirer, and 
she sat perfectly motionless while he swung past 
her eight times. When he moved fastest — that 
is, when he approached and passed her — he pro- 
duced in some unknown way a high, clear, sweet, 
musical note, louder even than the humming 
which was incessant during his flight. In this 
first performance the male moved from north to 
south. A few minutes later he went through the 
dance a second time, describing a shorter curve 
and moving east and west. Still a third time, 
when the female had taken position in the midst 
of a few dense branches, the male faced her, and 
in a short arc, the plane of which was horizontal, 
flew back and forth before her. I had seen this 
performance once before, in July, 1890, at an- 
other orchard, and at that time I fancied that 
both birds took part in the flight, but in this 
case the birds were close above me as I lay 
among the ferns, and there was no difficulty in 
seeing clearly all that they did. During July, 



THE nUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 265 

1893, whenever I visited this orchard, which I 
call " No. 4," I found a male and a female ruby- 
throat in attendance upon it. 

In July and August, 1890, while watching 
sapsuckers at what I called orchards " No. 1 " 
and "No. 2," I found that some woodpeckers 
adopted an entirely different method of dealing 
with humming-birds from that practiced by 
others. At orchard No. 1, the woodpeckers 
drove away a humming-bird with a marked dis- 
play of anger whenever one showed itself near 
the large red maple which was being tapped. 
At orchard No. 2, on the contrary, the sapsuck- 
ers allowed the ruby-throats to drink at drills a 
few inches from their own bills, and resented 
only marked impertinence on the part of their 
tiny visitors. At No. 1, scores of visits were 
paid by humming-birds every day, but they 
reached the drills in a comparatively small num- 
ber of instances. When they did gain them 
they drank long and deeply, often perching 
upon the bark and drinking while their nervous 
wings were motionless. At No. 2, it seemed im- 
possible to estimate the number of humming- 
birds in attendance. I went so far as to shoot a 
male and a female in order to feel certain that 
more than one pair of the tiny birds came to the 
drills. Nine minutes after my second crime a 
-^:?~~-4;hird humming-bird was quietly drinking at the 



266 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

wells. Orchards No. 1 and No. 2 were deserted 
in or after 1891, their trees for the most part 
being dead, or so nearly dead as to be unattrac- 
tive to the sapsuckers. A few rods from No. 2, 
a new orchard was observed by me in 1892. It 
may be a direct continuation of No. 2, but as 
all the woodpeckers at No. 2 were supposed to 
have been shot in 1890, the chances are that it is 
a new settlement. In July, 1893, twenty gray 
birches within an area a hundred feet square 
had been scarred by the woodpeckers. About 
half of these were dead, and out of the entire 
number only four trees were newly drilled and 
sap-yielding. In many ways this orchard proved 
to be the most interesting I have watched. 
The family of sapsuckers using it was not pug- 
nacious, and in consequence other birds visited 
it much more freely than is generally the case. 
Downy woodpeckers occasionally sipped at its 
fountains ; black-and-white creeping warblers 
regularly, though warily, visited its insect hoards, 
and during the autumn migration of 1892 a pair 
of yellow-breasted flycatchers spent many days 
in constant attendance upon its trees, around 
which countless insects fluttered or hummed. 

The four sap-yielding trees at this orchard 
appeared in July, 1893, to have been appropri- 
ated, subject to the prior claims of the wood- 
peckers, by three humming-birds, a female and 



THE nU3IMING-BIRDS OF C HOC OR U A. 267 

two males. No one of tliese birds permitted 
either of the others or any one of nmnerous fili- 
bustering humming-birds to drink at its preemp- 
ted wells. If trespass was attempted, the most 
furious assault was made upon the intruder, and 
the possessor was always victorious. Thus, if 
the female at the eastern tree attempted to ap- 
proach the western tree, the male on guard there 
drove her away ; while if he entered upon her 
dominions, he was swiftly repulsed. The details 
of these meetings were sometimes very extraor- 
dinary. In one instance a visiting female per- 
sisted for nearly ten minutes in trying to secure 
a foothold at the western tree. The savage 
little male met her with his usual impetuous 
charge, but she dodged him, and began a strange 
sinuous flight among the branches, back and 
forth, up and down, round and through, over 
and under, until the air seemed filled with pur- 
sued and pursuer, dizzily maintaining their mys- 
terious flight within from five to a hundred feet 
of the disputed drinking place. Much of the 
time the female seemed to be facing the male 
and flying backward slowly with head erect ; 
then there would come a swift " buzz-z-z," and a 
clear space between the trees would be traversed 
by both birds with the speed of light, a slower 
flight being resumed the moment foliage was 
entered. If the male paused in his pursuit,, the 



268 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

female drew near again to the coveted drills, 
and so forced liim to renew tlie chase. Some- 
times they moved so slowly that they seemed 
like bubbles or airy seed vessels wafted by the 
breeze, and sometimes they flew in short, ever- 
changing lines, so that the eye wearied of watch- 
ing them. At last the female gave up the 
struggle and vanished above the neighboring 
treetops. 

Frequently the visitors did not come singly, 
but arrived two or three together, and made 
combined attacks upon the drills. Then the 
air would be filled with violent humming and 
the most petulant squeaking, as the possessors 
hurled themselves first at one intruder and then 
at another, driving them back and forth, as 
though playing battledore and shuttlecock with 
them. Twice I saw the male, who defended the 
western tree, lock bills with a visiting female 
and fall almost to the ground in combat ; and 
in several instances I noticed a hotly pursued 
visitor escape by suddenly doubling, seizing a 
twig, and then hanging head downward by one 
foot behind a cluster of leaves. As a rule, the 
ruby-throat, when drinking, makes a perfectly 
audible humming, the male making a sound 
somewhat louder and deeper than that produced 
by the female. It is, however, entirely within 
the range of their accomplishments to hover 



THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CUOCORUA. 269 

silently, and it is not unusual for a visitor to 
drink silently when successful in reaching a tree 
unseen. While I never have seen a male ruby- 
throat drink from the drills while perching, 
I have noticed the female doing so scores of 
times. In fact, the female at the eastern tree 
perched nearly a third of the time, sometimes 
on a twig from which she could lean over and 
sip the sap, sometimes on the bark itself in a 
position almost identical with that taken by the 
woodpecker. 

One morning while I was watching the new 
orchard, a shower came up from behind the west- 
ern spurs of Chocorua. Thimder grumbled, the 
sky grew dark, and the wind swished viciously 
through the slender birches. I wondered what 
the birds and insects would do when the rain 
came. From where I sat, I could see dozens of 
living things, most of which were more or less 
dependent upon the sapsuckers' orchard. There 
were four of the woodpeckers themselves, three 
humming - birds, a hermit thrush, two juncos, 
three chickadees, a least flycatcher ; five or six 
butterflies representing three species ; hornets 
and numbers of flies, ants, and other small in- 
sects. As the rain began, the insects, with the 
exception of the hornets, vanished at once. All 
the birds, save one of the woodpeckers and the 
ruby-throats, flew out of sight. The remaining 



270 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 

sapsucker was a young bird, who looked stupid, 
and wlio received the rain by ducking bis bead 
and vibrating bis tail and wings as a bird does 
when be batbes in a pool. But tbe ruby-tbroats 
amazed me by tbeir conduct. Tbey sought leaf- 
less twigs with only the weeping sky above them, 
and there, apparently with joy, extended their 
wings to the fullest extent, spread their tails 
until every feather showed its point, and then 
received the pelting, pounding rain as though it 
were holy water. They became so wet that I 
doubted whether tbey could fly. Buzz-z-z I the 
vigilant male darted at an intruding female and 
drove her out of sight, only to see her return 
again and again in the thickest of the white 
drops in vain attempts to overcome his watchful- 
ness. It was evident that no ordinary shower 
could interfere with the whirring wings of a 
humming-bird. ' 

As the season of 1893 wore on, the number of 
humming-birds at this orchard diminished. Late 
in July I saw not fewer than fiNQ birds near 
the trees at one moment, three of them being 
regular attendants and two interlopers. During 
the next four weeks I was absent, but on my 
return, I found that only the female using the 
eastern tree remained, and that she was seldom 
annoyed by visitors. The trees which had been 
used by the other two birds had run dry, and the 



THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 271 

sapsuckers as well as tlieir uninvited guests had 
abandoned them. Of the identity of the remain- 
ing humming-bird there could be no question ; 
her ways were too strongly marked to be mis- 
taken, as, for example, her invariable habit of 
alighting upon one slightly sloping trunk when 
she drank from its drills. When September 
drew near I watched closely to ascertain the date 
of the little lady's departure, but day after day 
came and went without my missing her. At 
last, on September 1st, it seemed to me that she 
had gone. I had waited ten or fifteen minutes 
by the trees and she had not come, though the 
sapsuckers were busy at the drills in their ac- 
customed places. Before finally giving her up 
I thought that I would count a hundred slowly 
and see if this form of incantation might not 
draw her to her trees. When I reached " ninety- 
nine " and no bird came, I concluded that the 
exact date of her migration had been found, but 
as I said " one hundred " there was a faint hum 
in the still air, and the dainty dipper appeared 
with her usual sprightliness. On the 6th, after 
several light frosts had laid their chilly touch 
upon the Chocorua country, I felt confident that 
the tiny creature must have sought a kinder 
climate. Again, however, she surprised me by 
appearing, after a long delay, as bright as ever. 
She hummed at her regular drinking places, but 



272 FROM BLOMTDON TO SMOKY. 

seemed to find little moisture in the wasting foun- 
tains. The trees were losing vitality and becom- 
ing dry. Then she sought the dead twigs at the 
tops of last year's trees and flitted back and forth 
among them, sunning herself. No perch pleased 
her long, and when she wearied of them all she 
darted back to the drills for a brief perfunctory 
sip of the slow-moving sap. Her restlessness 
seemed born of the season, and a symptom of 
that fever of migration which was making all 
bird-life throb more and more quickly. 

Although on September 25th, when I made 
my last visit of the year to the orchard, I found 
two sapsuckers still at work at the drills, no 
humming-bird was with them. How long after 
the 6th the vigorous little female remained I do 
not know, for I was unable to watch the trees 
during the middle of the month. 

Although at Chocorua I never have found a 
sapsuckers' orchard without its attendant hum- 
ming-birds, I am by no means sure that in other 
localities where both birds occur the same com- 
munity of interests is to be detected. During a 
brief visit to Cape Breton in midsummer, 1893, 
I kept close watch for sapsuckers and humming- 
birds. Of the latter, not one came under my 
eyes, although common testimony was that they 
frequented the country. Of the sapsuckers I 
found one flourishing colony among the alders 



THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 273 

which bordered the southwest Margaree at the 
point where that swift stream emerges from Loch 
Ainslie. More than a dozen alder trunks had 
been girdled with drills and a rich orchard 
seemed to be in use. I had not long to wait at 
the spot, but in the fifteen minutes which I could 
spare no humming-birds came to reward my 
silent watching. 

In some parts of the country sapsuckers are 
roughly treated on account of their destruction 
of trees. It is unquestionably true that each 
family of birds kills one or more vigorous trees 
each year, but generally the trees are small and 
of trifling value as timber. My sapsuckers are 
welcome to several forest trees a year, so long as 
they continue to attract and feed humming-birds, 
and indirectly to draw thousands of insects within 
easy reach of their own bills and the more 
active mandibles of flycatchers, warblers, and 
vireos. 



INDEX. 



Acadian, 4, 5, 8, 79. 

Albany, 187. 

Alder, 101, 128, 272, 273. 

Annapolis, 3, 7. 

Annapolis Basin, 1, 2, 98, 104. 

Ant, 150, 152, 1G9, 238, 269. 

Antigonish, G8. 

Apple, G, 7, 190, 231, 243, 244, 260. 

Arlington, 242. 

Ash, 131, 154, 216, 238-241, 245. 

Aster, 220. 

Avon, 80. 

Baddeck, 13, 15-17, 20, 21, 29, 66- 

68, 83, 88, 91-94, 95, 100, 103, 

104. 
Bar, 22-24, 29, 41, 85. 
Barasois, Mountain, 21, 22 ; River, 

22, 28, 67. 
Barberry, 239. 
Bat, 221. 
Bay of Fundy, 1, 2, 4, 5, 73-77, 79, 

80, 93, 94. 
Balsam fir, 3, 15, 25, 26, 59, 63, 85. 
Bear River, 3. 

Beech, 35, 63, 106, 135, 176, 177, 195. 
Birch, yellow, 33, 35, 44, 63, 106; 

canoe, 131, 132, 140, 141, 149, 

154, 188, 213, 232, 260 ; white, 125, 

146, 241, 262, 266. 
Bittern, 46, 217, 233. 
Blackbird, 100; cowbird, 100, 129, 

208, 216, 222 ; purple grackle, 100, 

129 ; redwing, 100, 129, 215, 216 ; 

rusty grackle, 100. 
Blomidon, 1,3-7, 22, 31, 69, 74-81, 93. 
Bluebird, 128, 214, 222, 231. 
Bobolink, 100, 217. 
Bohemian wax-wing, 233. 
Boston, 223. 
Bras d'Or, 13, 14, 20, 21, 26, 35, 42, 

56, 68, 73, 81, 93, 95, 96, 104. 
Brown creeper, 213. 
Butterfly, 143, 151, 221, 222, 249, 

269. 



Cambridge, 117, 129, 198, 237. 

Canard River, 6. 

Canso, Gut of, 12, 13, 68. 

Cape Breton, 12-14, 32-36, 65, 67, 
82-105, 272 ; Dauphin, 2«, 30, 31, 
35; North, 24, 36; Sharp, 74-76, 
78; Smoky, 16, 21-28, 31-39, 43, 
48-52, 55-58, 79, 81, 83, 97, 98, 
103 ; Split, 74, 76, 78. 

Cat, 195. 

Catbird, 83, 123, 188, 222, 224, 225. 

Cedar. 238, 243. 

Cedarbird, 122, 123, 126, 191, 216, 
232, 233. 

Charles River, 237. 

Chewiuk, 129. 

Chickadee, black-capped, 82, 88, 89, 
102, 117, 120, 129, 130, 187, 188, 
193, 213, 222, 224, 225, 239, 241, 
245, 269; Hudson's Bay, 67, 82. 
87 89, 102, 187, 241. 

Chimney swift, 94, 124, 199, 215, 
247-259. 

Chipmunk, 224. 

Chocorua, 14, 81, 88, 92, 99, 124, 
128, 129, 228,261, 271, 272; Lake, 
106, 146 ; Mountain, 52, 106, 119, 
123, 125, 131, 156, 215, 220, 260, 
262 ; River, 106, 146. 

Ciboux Islands, 28. 

Cobequid mountains, 5, 68, 80. 

Cormorant, 45, 46, 104. 

Cornwallis River, 6 ; Valley, 4. 

Crossbill, red, 60, 100, 207, 241 ; 
white, 99, 125. 

Crow, 46, 47, 97, 98, 120, 126, 135, 
192, 193, 199, 210, 216, 223, 234, 
240, 242, 245. 

Cuckoo, black-billed, 124, 125, 188. 

Digby, 2. 

Dike, 4, 5, 6, 8, 79. 

Dog, 227. 

Dragon fly, 238. 

Duck, 223 ; dusky, 104 ; golden-eye, 



276 



INDEX. 



104; merganser, red -breasted, 
103; old squaw, 104; wood, 219, 
222, 223. 

Eagle, 84, 85, 96, 127, 199, 209. 
Elm, 231, 242. 

Englishtown, 21, 22, 67, 103. 
Euphrasia officinalis, 82. 
Evangeline, land of, 1. 
Evening primrose, 142. 
Eyebright, 82. 

Finch, 207, 217. 

Eireweed, 2, 220. 

Fly, 150, 169, 269. 

Flycatcher, great-crested, 99, 124, 
128, 191; least, 99, 269; olive- 
sided, 99 ; yellow-breasted, 266. 

Fox, 220, 222, 223. 

French River, 27, 29, 31. 

Gaspereaux River, 3-6, 80. 

Glooscap, 76. 

Goldenrod, 45, 220. 

Goldfinch, 99, 123, 241. 

Goshawk, 63, 64. 

Grand Narrows, 13-15, 68. 

Grand Pr(5, 4-7, 80, 93. 

Great Hill, 220. 

Grebe, 217. 

Grosbeak, pine, 207, 239, 242, 243, 

245 ; red-breasted, 124. 
Grouse, Canada, 103 ; ruffed, 103, 

189, 19f, 233. 
Gull, herring, 104, 120, 208, 217, 223. 
Gypsum, 42, 99 ; fibrous, 81. 

Habitant River, 6. 

Halifax, 8, 9, 11, 14, 56. 

Hare, 221. 

Harlaw, 56, 57. 

Hawk, 63, 120, 193, 199, 206, 208, 

209 ; coopers, 96, 106, 126 ; marsh, 

89, 96 ; red - shouldered, 106 ; 

sharp-shinned, 126, 191 ; sparrow, 

96. 
Hemlock, 35, 44, 63, 106, 131, 193, 

213. 
Heron, blue, 3, 15, 68, 104, 217. 
Hobblebush, 63. 
Hornet, 150, 151, 269. 
Humming-bird, 94, 102, 129, 131-155, 

188, 206, 217, 229, 230, 249, 260- 

273. 

Inchworm, 238. 

Indian Brook, 27, 28, 58, 60, 61, 

64, 65, 66, 102, 103 ; Falls, 63, 64, 

91. 
Indigo Bird, 129, 



Ingonish, 24, 31, 34, 37, 38, 55-58, 

82, 88, 97-100, 103, 104. 
Isle au Haut, 79. 

Jay, blue, 90, 97, 126, 130, 135, 193, 
210, 216, 222, 234, 239, 245 ; Can- 
ada, 90, 91, 97. 

Jellyfish, 14. 

Junco, 22, 60, 82, 88, 95, 102, 123- 
125, 207, 222, 243, 245, 269. 

Juniper, 63, 189, 243. 

Kentville, 3, 6, 77. 

Kingbird, 98, 99, 124, 188, 216. 

Kingfisher, 18, 26, 54, 84, 95, 124, 

232. 
Kinglet, ruby-crowned, 89, 129, 187, 

233; g6lden-crested, 238,241,242, 

245. 
Kingsport, 77, 78. 

Larch, 2, 21, 83, 89, 91, 131. 

Larkspur, 249. 

Loch Ainslie, 17, 19, 20, 83, 84, 87, 

92, 101, 102, 273 ; o' Law, 17, 18, 

82, 95, 104. 
Logcock, 121, 122, 213. 
Look-off, 6-8, 79, 80. 
Loon, 18, 104, 191. 

Maple, 44, 63, 131, 132, 146, 150, 

151 154 265. 
Margaree,' 16-20, 83, 88, 92, 100, 101, 

273. 
Marston Hill, 220. 
Mertensia Tnariiima, 25. 
Meteghan, 2. 
Micmac, 68, 76. 
Middle Head, 38, 40-43, 45, 47, 56, 

98, 104. 
Middle River, 95, 96, 100. 
Milkweed, 221. 
Minas, Basin of, 1, 4-8, 35, 69, 75- 

81, 93, 94. 
Moosebird, 90, 91, 97. 
Mountain Ash, 63. 

Nasturtium, 138, 167. 
Newfoundland, 21, 37, 41, 51, 56, 

57, 59. 
Nighthawk, 94, 129, 192, 215. 
North Mountain, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7. 
North River, 21, 67. 
North Shore, 23, 33, 59. 
Nova Scotia, 1, 8, 10, 14, 79, 98. 
Nuthatch, red-breasted, 88, 129, 130, 

213, 241 ; white, 88, 129, 213. 

Oak, red, 141, 145, 154. 
Orchid, 19. 



INDEX. 



277 



Oriole, 100, 129, 231 ; orchard, 233. 

O.sprey, 9G. 

Owl, 208, 209, 214, 216, 221 ; Aca- 
dian, 128, 176, 181, 187, 188, 198 ; 
barred, lOG-132, 147, 176, 177, 180- 
186, 190-197, 199-205, 225-228, 
235, 236, 245; great-horned, 97, 
176, 181, 183, 186, 194-196, 199, 
203, 234 ; long-eared, 176, 178, 
181, 196; screech, 147, 148, 176, 
178, 179, 181, 186, 188, 196, 198, 
203, 244, 245 ; snowy, 97, 176, 180- 
186, 188-190, 194-198, 201-203. 

Pai-rsboro, 69, 70, 72-77. 

Partridge Island, 74, 75, 77, 78. 

Partridge, spruce, 103. 

Paugus, 99. 

Peep, 3. 

Pereaux, 7, 77, 79, 93; River, 5, 

6. 
Pewee, 99, 255. 
Pine, 20, 46, 47, 63, 98, 99, 212, 237, 

242, 243. 
Pine siskin, 82, 193, 207, 241. 
Point Aconi, 30, 35. 
Poplar, 63, 151, 157, 158, 228. 
Porcupine, 58. 
Port Royal, 2, 3. 
Prince Edward Island, 84, 85. 
Privet, 239. 
Purple finch, 89, 123, 233, 241. 

Raven, 34, 45-47, 97, 98. 
Redpoll linnet, 130, 207, 241. 
Robin, 83, 89, 101, 102, 117, 122, 

128, 231, 245. 
Rose, 45. 

Salmon, 18, 59, 62. 

Sandpiper, least, 104 ; semipalmated, 
104 ; solitary, 104, 191, 192 ; spot- 
ted, 83, 85-87. 

Sapsucker, 101, 106, 121, 131-175, 
188, 198, 212, 228-230, 200-263, 
265, 266, 269-273. 

Savin, 243. 

Scotsville, 92. 

Shag, 45, 46, 104. 

Shagbark, 261. 

Snipe, 233. 

Snow bunting, 207, 241. 

South Mountain, 1, 7. 

Sparrow, 207, 208, 211, 216, 217; 
chipping, 99, English, 217, 223; 
field, 123; fox, 233; Savannah, 
100 ; song, 82, 100, 188, 224, 225, 
231-233 ; swamp, 100 ; vesper, 82, 
123; white-crowned, 124; white- 
throated, 82, 88, 123-125, 207. 



Springhill, 69-71. 

Spruce, 2, 3, 15, 25, 26, 34, 35, 44, 

59, 60, 63, 65, 74, 75, 82, 83, 85, 

125, 198, 231. 
Squirrel, 64, 219, 229. 
StarHng, 100. 
St. Anne's Bay, 21-23, 25, 26, 35, 41, 

67, 83. 
St. Mary's Bay, 1, 2. 
St. Pierre, 44, 59. 
Strawberries, 13, 21. 
Sumac, 249. 
Swallow, bank, 93; barn, 92, 123, 

215, 216, 249, 255 ; eaves, 92, 93. 
Swift River Valley, 198. 
Sycamore, 254. 
Sydney, 13, 26, 35. 

Tanager, 126, 191, 211. 

Tern, 24, 40, 104, 208, 216. 

Thrush, 211, 216, 233 ; brown, 83, 
117, 123; gray-cheeked, 83; her- 
mit, 83, 120, 122, 140, 193, 211, 
212, 233, 269 ; Swainson's, 83, 122, 

127, 193 ; veery, 83, 122, 188, 249. 
Tracadie, 68. 

Trout, 20, 39, 59, 84, 95, 221-223. 
Trout Brook, 83-85, 87. 
Trumpet-flower, 143. 
Truro, 80. 

Vireo, red-eyed, 99, 117, 120, 123, 

128, 141, 188, 214, 216 ; solitary, 
99, 123, 125, 191, 214; warbling, 
214 ; yeUow-throated, 214. 

Warbler, 211, 216 ; bay-breasted, 92, 
210 ; black and white, 82, 89, 125, 
141, 266; black and yellow, 89, 
91,125; Blackburnian, 91 ; black- 
poll, 92, 125, 210 ; black-throated 
blue, 91 ; black-throated green, 
89, 125 ; Canadian fly-catching, 
91, 125, 210; chestnut-sided, 92, 
125; Maryland, 91, 100, 210; 
Nashville, 89 ; pine-creeping, 92 ; 
redstart, 91, 125, 210, 230; sum- 
mar yellow, 91 ; yellow redpoll, 
92; yellow-rumped, 82, 89, 210; 
parula, 92, 106, 210; Wilson's 
black-cap, 92 ; mourning, 92 ; 
oven-bird, 92, 117, 120, 125. 

Wasp, 144, 152. 

Water thrush, 233. 

Whippoorwill, 94, 129, 192, 217. 

Whycocomagh, 17, 20. 

Willow, 6, 54, 198, 231. 

Wolf, 220. 

Wolfville, 3, 4. 

Woodcock, 103, 217, 233. 



278 



INDEX. 



Woodpecker, 216, 233 ; downy, 101, 
121, 140, 146, 164, 165, 229, 261, 
266 ; hairy, 101, 121 ; flicker, 89, 
101, 102, 117, 121, 239, 245 ; pile- 
ated, 101, 121, 122, 213; three- 
toed, 67, 101, 102 ; yellow-breasted, 
101, 106, 121, 131-175, 188,198,212, 



228-230, 260-263, 265, 266, 269- 

273. 
Wren, 213 ; winter, 129, 214. 
Wren orchard, 237, 242, 243. 

Yarmouth, 1, 14. 
Yellow-legs, 26, 104. 



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